Backlash after Thailand frees 85-year-old drug trafficker

Thailand's justice minister pledged on Tuesday to review pardon criteria following backlash over the release of an 85-year-old drug trafficker who served less than a decade of a life prison sentence.

Laota Saenlee, a former anti-communist guerrilla turned drug runner linked to powerful Myanmar drug kingpins, was arrested by undercover officers in 2016 for selling crystal meth in the Golden Triangle drug-producing region.

The rugged Golden Triangle zone -- where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet -- has long been a hub for some of the world's most prolific illicit drug producers.

Organised crime groups move an estimated tens of billions of dollars worth of heroin, methamphetamine and ketamine annually from the region.

Thailand's corrections department said Monday that Laota was released from a maximum-security prison just north of the capital Bangkok on Friday following a series of royal pardons that reduced his life sentence to below the nearly 10 years he served.

The "former key drug offender" was freed due to his age and good behaviour, and local authorities would monitor him after his release, the department said in a statement.

His release was widely condemned on social media, and Rewat Klinkesorn, a former narcotics police chief who once investigated Laota, told local media on Monday he was "shocked that a major drugs dealer was released so early".

"The corrections department should improve their regulations. He should not be classified as a good inmate because he is a major drugs dealer," Rewat said.

Justice Minister Rutthapon Naowarat told reporters on Tuesday he had ordered the corrections department to clarify the facts related to Laota's pardon and release.

"The officials followed the (pardon) criteria but there are some flaws in the criteria," Rutthapon said, adding that a review was underway.

Before his 2017 conviction, Laota had been detained multiple times over the years but authorities had not managed to make charges stick.

Laota, who hails from the Lisu ethnic minority, joined China's anti-communist Kuomintang as a child soldier and rose up through the ranks, according to a 2011 interview with the Bangkok Post.

Like many Kuomintang cadres, he later fought for Thailand against communist insurgents in the 1970s in exchange for sanctuary.

He is widely thought to have had ties to one of the world's most wanted drug traffickers, Khun Sa, a Myanmar-based rebel leader who died in 2007.