Yellow shirt leader Sondhi targeted for murder
Yellow shirt leader Sondhi claims he is targeted for murder
BANGKOK, Nov 20 (TNA) – New Politics Party (NPP) leader Sondhi Limthongkul claimed that he is targeted for being killed by a group who fear that his political party will expose corruption, saying that the grenade explosion behind stage at the ‘Yellow Shirt’ People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) demonstration at Sanam Luang on November 15 proved his point.
Mr Sondhi, 62, a media owner and a top PAD leader, said the M-79 attack during the PAD rally site at Sanam Luang on November 15 was an attempt to kill him as it was aimed at the stage while he addressed PAD from the stage.
He said that his sources confirmed there was an attempt to set up an execution team, a collaboration of many groups who share the goal of killing him.
Mr Sondhi said police, military, political parties with out-of-date thinking or capitalists who backed political parties to enter politics to collect corruption feared that his NPP party would expose the truth, unveiling their corruption.
The PAD demonstration November 15 aimed to show their joint determination to protect the nation’s dignity, while expressing their dissatisfaction with recent moves of fugitive, ousted Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
He also thanked Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva for assigning retired deputy national police chief Pol Gen Thani Somboonsub, deputy secretary general to the prime minister, to supervise the bomb attack case but he believed there would be no progress and that he could not arrest the assailants.
Mr Sondhi, who in April survived a murder attempt, said that in future he will be more careful, and that he would nonetheless retain his political ideology.
Targeted for assassination on the morning of April 17, Mr Sondhi was attacked by gunmen firing M-16 and AK-47 assault rifles who shot out his tyres in busy Bangkok traffic and fired over 100 bullets into his vehicle, wounding both Mr Sondhi and his driver.
The attackers escaped the scene when Mr Sondhi’s followers in another car opened fire on them. The then PAD leader suffered one wound to the head.
In early October he was elected leader of the new NPP party, which was founded on June 2.
Starting his career as a journalist, he later founded Manager Daily, a Thai-language broadsheet daily emphasising political and business news as well as satellite broadcaster ASTV.
