Thai Red Shirt chiefs ordered to pay for 2010 arson damage

Thailand’s Supreme Court has ordered three leaders of the Red Shirt political movement to pay 21 million baht ($691,000) compensation to business owners whose commercial buildings were set on fire at the climax of two months of aggressive street protests in 2010.

The Wednesday verdict was the latest in a series of rulings covering political unrest from 2006 to 2014. A 2006 military coup triggered a sometimes violent struggle for power between Red Shirt supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his opponents, the royalist Yellow Shirts.

The 2010 protests saw the Red Shirts occupy a large swath of central Bangkok before the army ousted them by force. More than 90 people were killed during the protests, and arson presumably carried out by Red Shirts caused extensive property damage.