Thai courtroom sentences gunman who killed Cambodian politician to life in jail

A courtroom in Bangkok on Friday (October 3, 2025) sentenced a Thai man who shot and killed an opposition politician from Cambodia to life in jail.

The January capturing in Thailand’s capital was broadly seen as a political assassination however the suspect’s motives had been by no means totally revealed.

Lim Kimya, a former lawmaker from the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party, was fatally shot on January 7 in broad daylight close to Bangkok’s Khaosan Road, a neighbourhood well-liked with backpacking vacationers.

The gunman, who fled the scene and made his means throughout the border to Cambodia, was recognized as Ekkalak Pheanoi. He was arrested and deported from Cambodia, and later confessed, based on authorities.

Ekkalak instructed authorities that he was employed to hold out the capturing, however the trial by no means established final duty for the killing.

The Bangkok Criminal Court formally sentenced Ekkalak to dying for the killing however his sentence was instantly lowered to life imprisonment as a result of he had confessed and cooperated with the authorities.

Human rights activists noticed the killing as one in a sequence of extrajudicial killings and compelled disappearances carried out lately in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in opposition to dissidents in exile.

Before the killing, Lim Kimya’s Facebook web page had carried messages crucial of Cambodia’s authorities.

Security digicam footage from the crime scene confirmed the gunman arriving on a motorcycle. Three gunshots are heard earlier than the person walks away because the sufferer collapses to the bottom. The suspect, whose face was not coated, then rode away on the motorcycle.

In the months that adopted, Thai police additionally issued an arrest warrant for 2 Cambodian males, one suspected of hiring Ekkalak and the opposite suspected of serving to determine Lim Kimya to the shooter. Both suspects are believed to have fled to Cambodia and stay at giant.

Ekkalak was convicted of all expenses, together with premeditated homicide and expenses associated to carrying and utilizing weapons. He was additionally ordered by the courtroom to pay the sufferer’s household in complete of 1.7 million baht ($55,100) in compensation.

Lawyer Nadthasiri Bergman, who represents Lim Kimya’s spouse, stated her shopper might file an attraction demanding a better quantity of compensation.

She demanded police push tougher to deliver the 2 different suspects to justice.

Cambodia below former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who held energy for nearly 4 a long time, was broadly criticised for human rights abuses, together with 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, however there have been few indicators of political liberalisation.

Also on Friday, the courtroom acquitted one other Thai man who was tried in the identical case, Chakrit Buakhli. He was accused of serving to Ekkalak by driving him to the border with Cambodia after the capturing, however the courtroom dominated he was merely a employed driver and never linked to the killing.