A court in Bangkok on Friday sentenced a Thai man who shot and killed an opposition politician from Cambodia to life in prison. The January shooting in Thailand’s capital was widely seen as a political assassination, but the suspect’s motives were never fully revealed.
Lim Kimya, a former lawmaker from the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party, was fatally shot on 7 January in broad daylight near Bangkok’s Khaosan Road, a neighbourhood popular with backpacking tourists.
The gunman, who fled the scene and made his way across the border to Cambodia, was identified as Ekkalak Pheanoi. He was arrested and deported from Cambodia, and later confessed, according to authorities.
Ekkalak told authorities that he was hired to carry out the shooting, but the trial never established ultimate responsibility for the killing.
The Bangkok Criminal Court formally sentenced Ekkalak to death for the killing but his sentence was immediately reduced to life imprisonment because he had confessed and cooperated with the authorities.
Human rights activists saw the killing as one in a series of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances carried out in recent years in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam against dissidents in exile.
Before the killing, Lim Kimya’s Facebook page had carried messages critical of Cambodia’s government.
Security camera footage from the crime scene showed the gunman arriving on a motorbike. Three gunshots are heard before the man walks away as the victim collapses to the ground. The suspect, whose face was not covered, then rode away on the motorbike.
In the months that followed, Thai police also issued an arrest warrant for two Cambodian men, one suspected of hiring Ekkalak and the other suspected of helping identify Lim Kimya to the shooter. Both suspects are believed to have fled to Cambodia and remain at large.
Ekkalak was convicted of all charges, including premeditated murder and charges related to carrying and using weapons. He was also ordered by the court to pay the victim’s family in total of 1.7 million baht ($55,100) in compensation.
Lawyer Nadthasiri Bergman, who represents Lim Kimya’s wife, said her client may file an appeal demanding a higher amount of compensation.
She demanded police push harder to bring the two other suspects to justice.
Cambodia under former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who held power for almost four decades, was widely criticized for human rights abuses, including the suppression of freedom of speech and persecution of political opponents. Hun Sen was succeeded in August 2023 by his U.S.-educated son, Hun Manet, but there have been few signs of political liberalization.
Also on Friday, the court acquitted another Thai man who was tried in the same case, Chakrit Buakhli. He was accused of helping Ekkalak by driving him to the border with Cambodia after the shooting, but the court ruled he was merely a hired driver and not connected to the killing.
