BANGKOK, Thailand: Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was acquitted on August 22 in a royal defamation case that could have carried a prison term of up to 15 years.

Emerging from Bangkok Criminal Court with a smile, the 76-year-old gave reporters a one-word response — "Dismissal" — as his lawyer, Winyat Chatmontree, confirmed the verdict. The court itself did not immediately issue a statement.

Thailand's lese majeste law criminalizes defamation of the monarchy and is among the harshest in the world, with penalties of three to 15 years in prison. Human rights groups say it has increasingly been used to silence critics. Thai Lawyers for Human Rights has recorded more than 270 prosecutions under the law since 2020, many against student activists.

Winyat explained that judges dismissed the charges against Thaksin because the evidence and witness testimony were too weak. The prosecution's account of the 2015 interview in South Korea that triggered the case was incomplete and lacked context, the court found, and a key passage did not clearly refer to the monarchy. The court also suggested political bias may have influenced the complaint.

The case was first filed in 2016 but stalled while Thaksin remained abroad in self-imposed exile after being toppled in a 2006 military coup. Although indicted last year, he was granted bail on the condition that he could not leave Thailand and had to surrender his passport.

Thaksin has long argued that the numerous charges against him — including corruption and abuse of power — were politically motivated. His critics, many of them staunch royalists, accuse him of undermining the monarchy. Despite multiple prosecutions, he has never served time in prison. When he finally returned in 2023, after the Pheu Thai Party, linked to his family, regained power, he was sentenced to eight years but immediately transferred to a hospital. After six months, he received a royal pardon and parole, fueling accusations of preferential treatment.

Now active in Thai politics again, Thaksin frequently tours the country and comments on current affairs, alarming conservative elites. His daughter, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, faces her own crisis: she was suspended in July over allegations she mishandled a June 15 call with Cambodia's Senate president about a border dispute. The Constitutional Court will decide next week whether she loses her post.

Thailand has seen more than a dozen coups since the 1930s, but in recent decades, courts have played an increasing role in removing governments viewed as threatening to the royalist establishment, dissolving parties, and ousting leaders — a pattern that continues to shape the Shinawatras' political fortunes.