Thai police have summoned five leaders of the royalist "Yellow Shirt" movement, along with dozens of supporters, to face charges over the 2008 seizure of two Bangkok airports, a spokesman said Monday.
Seventy-nine people linked to the People\'s Alliance for Democracy, as the Yellows are formally known, have been called to hear charges ranging from illegal occupation to terrorism, Lieutenant General Somyos Phumphanmuang said.
They include PAD founder Sondhi Limthongkul and Somsak Kosaisuk, leader of the Yellows\' New Politics Party, which has emerged as a rival to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva\'s ruling Democrats ahead of elections expected next year.
The Yellows\' siege at Bangkok\'s two main airports stranded hundreds of thousands of tourists and helped to topple a government allied to fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The group, whose 2006 rallies helped trigger the coup that unseated Thaksin, claims allegiance to the throne and is backed by the Bangkok-based elite who detest Thaksin, the hero of the mostly poor and working class "Red Shirts."
Many Red Shirt leaders are in jail for their roles in violent protests in Bangkok and the movement had complained that the lack of charges filed against the Yellows showed a "double standard of justice".
The Reds\' two-month-long protest in central Bangkok descended into several outbreaks of violence that left 90 people dead and nearly 1,900 injured, ending in a bloody army crackdown in May.
