Bangkok - Fugitive Thai former premier Thaksin Shinawatra got a special police escort when his private jet stopped over for refuelling in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month, media reports said on Tuesday, quoting Thaksin. "My private jet stopped for refuelling in
Malaysia and they sent 20 special-branch policemen to guard me," Thaksin said in a phone-in interview with the FM 97.5 provincial radio station on Monday.
"They
love and care about me," he said of the Malaysians, according to The Nation newspaper.
Thaksin's plane reportedly stopped for refuelling in Kuala Lumpur on July 4 and departed the next day for Fiji. On Friday he reportedly returned to Dubai, where the billionaire ex-premier has been living in self-imposed exile since losing his Thai passport in April.
Thaksin was prime minister between 2001 and 2006. He was ousted in a coup on September 19, 2006, and barred from Thai politics for five years by a court ruling in May, 2007.
Although he dared to return to
Thailand in February, 2008, when the pro-Thaksin People Power Party was leading the government, he and his former wife Potchaman fled the country in August, 2008, after Potchaman was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion.
In October, Thailand's Supreme Court for political office holders sentenced Thaksin in absentia to two years imprisonment for abuse of power for allowing his wife to bid successfully for a plot of
Bangkok land in a government-run auction in 2003.
The Thai government is seeking Thaksin's extradition from foreign countries to serve his prison term at home.
