Former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has apparently fled the country in advance of a court verdict on charges brought by the current military regime that could have seen her face a long prison term. She is assumed to have joined her brother, the billionaire populist Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been in exile, mostly in Dubai, since 2008 when he fled in the face of charges brought by a previous military regime which had overthrown his elected government in 2006 and outlawed his Thai Rak Thai party.