Hundreds of intimate pictures of Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi, the mistress of the king of Thailand, have allegedly been stolen from her personal phone and leaked to anti-monarchy activists as revenge porn, as part of an attempt to “sabotage” her return.
More than 1,400 selfies, many of them sexually explicit, were reportedly stolen and anonymously leaked in a cyberattack that coincides with her return to the palace after being imprisoned last year by king Maha Vajiralongkorn.
The private pictures of the royal consort were also sent to British commentator Andrew MacGregor Marshall and academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun who is living in Japan and faces criminal prosecution in Thailand for critiquing the monarchy.
“The photographs are clearly from Koi’s personal phones,” Marshall tweeted on 22 November. “Most of the images are photographs she took of herself, and dozens of them are very explicit. It seems probable that she had taken these explicit photographs of herself to send to Vajiralongkorn.”
Marshall further wrote that the images were sent to him shortly before Ms Wongvajirapakdi’s release from Lat Yao women’s prison in Bangkok to rejoin the king with all her royal titles and privileges restored.
Popularly known as Koi, Ms Wongvajirapakdi, 35, graduated from the Army Nursing College in 2008 and completed military courses in combat, jungle warfare and night parachuting. She also served in the king’s royal bodyguard unit, reaching the rank of Major General.
In August 2019, Ms Wongvajirapakdi was elevated to the position of the “royal consort” just three months after the king’s marriage to his fourth wife, queen Suthida.
She was, however, stripped of her title and military ranks just months after she was accused of “disloyalty” and of seeking to undermine the position of the monarch’s wife. In an official statement, the palace accused Ms Wongvajirapakdi of being “dishonourable, lacking gratitude [and of] disobedience against the king and the queen”.
She was, however, released from detention in September this year after spending ten months at a correctional facility and has now been declared “untainted.”
Ms Wongvajirapakdi’s return to the palace “was bitterly opposed” by factions supporting queen Suthida and princess Bajrakitiyabha, wrote Marshall adding, “it is highly probable the images of Koi were leaked in an effort to sabotage her return as Vajiralongkorn’s consort.”
