BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s new military government moved
against two of its top targets on Thursday, capturing a top organizer of
protests against its recent takeover and launching a probe into the
finances of the former elected prime minister.
Protest leader
Sombat Boonngam-anong himself was the first to announce his own arrest,
posting a message Thursday night on his Facebook account saying simply,
"I’ve been arrested."
Thai media later reported that Sombat, also
known as Nuling, was captured in a house in Cholburi province, about two
hours east of Bangkok.
Sombat had defied an order from the new
military government to report to the authorities, and went into hiding,
going online to organize anti-coup protests in Bangkok.
The
website of the newspaper Khaosod reported that he was arrested by police
officers of the Technology Crime Suppression Division working with the
army, and that he had been traced on the internet by the National
Intelligence Agency.
The new government has warned that it is
closely monitoring online activities, and plans to expand its
surveillance capabilities.
Several dozen people have defied the
order to turn themselves in, and some are known to have fled to
neighboring countries. The junta has declared that those who don’t
surrender themselves may be subject to a two-year jail term.
Sombat
was one of the first people to organize protests against Thailand’s
previous coup, in 2006, and became known for imaginative and non-violent
tactics.
Earlier Thursday, Thailand’s state anti-corruption
agency said it would investigate the assets of former Prime Minister
Yingluck Shinawatra and four members of her Cabinet involved in a
controversial rice subsidy program.
The move by the National
Anti-Corruption Commission followed the May 22 coup that overthrew the
elected government Yingluck had led. She was forced from office herself
by a court ruling earlier in May that she had abused her authority in
approving the transfer of a high-level civil servant.
Coup leaders
in Thailand usually seek to publicize alleged corruption by the
governments they overthrew as a way of discrediting them and justifying
their own takeovers. Yingluck’s brother Thaksin Shinawatra faced similar
treatment after a 2006 coup ousted him from the prime minister’s job.
He is in self-imposed exile to escape a jail term for a conflict of
interest conviction.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission had
already indicted Yingluck over charges of dereliction of duty in
overseeing the rice subsidy program, charging that she failed to heed
advice that it was potentially wasteful and prone to corruption. The
Senate could have held an impeachment trial that might have barred her
from politics for five years, but the parliamentary body was dissolved
by the army after the coup.
The commission is known for having
made several significant rulings against Yingluck and her government,
which her supporters suspect was part of a conspiracy to oust her from
office.
They believe that independent agencies such as the
commission, along with high level courts, are aligned with Thailand’s
conservative traditional ruling class — guided by royalists and the
military — who were alarmed at the political power of the Shinawatra
family and its political machine. Thaksin and his allies have won every
general election since 2001.
The independent agencies and courts were seeded with anti-Thaksin personnel after the 2006 coup.
In
its earlier ruling, the commission said it was unclear whether Yingluck
was involved in corruption or had allowed it to take place. Very few,
if any, prosecutions in court have been launched in connection with the
rice program.
Yingluck, along with most of her government, was briefly detained by the army after the coup.
The
brief announcement said three former commerce ministers and a former
deputy commerce ministers would also be investigated, without
elaborating why it was forming a new subcommittee to probe them.
The subsidy program bought rice from farmers at above-market prices in an effort to boost rural incomes.

As
the world’s top rice exporter, Thailand hoped to control the market and
push up prices. But India and Vietnam increased exports, which prompted
stockpiling by Thailand as it tried to contain losses from its subsidy
policy. The program incurred huge financial losses for the government,
though there is no reliable estimate of the total.
The program was
denounced by Yingluck’s critics as being designed to win votes. But it
became a major political weapon against her when protesters began
rallying against Yingluck last November and successfully pressured banks
not to lend to the government, delaying the payments to farmers.
Shortly after the coup, the new military government announced that it would make the long-delayed
payments.
—
Associated Press writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report.