BANGKOK, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- Thai Airway International filed a defamatory lawsuit against a little known website on Thursday for allegedly divulging the names of the national flag carrier's passengers in a recent chartered flight to Hawaii.
THAI lawyers lodged the libel charges to the Technology Crime Suppression Division against administrators of the website named ''Stop Pretending Thailand'' for allegedly posting the list of 43 passengers in September 29's chartered flight to Hawaii, which included the name of Deputy Prime Minister/Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan.
The airline firm had been damaged by such unauthorized exposure of its passengers' names which were supposed to be held confidential, the TCSD police quoted the airline's lawyers as saying.
Gen. Prawit, who had led a group of government officials, many of whom handling national security affairs, and other persons to the ASEAN-United States Defense Informal Meeting in the island state until October 2, has been criticized in the media for taking a ''costly'' air travel at the expense of the taxpayer's money which amounted to 20 million baht(about 580,000 U.S. dollars).
Nevertheless, the defense minister categorically dismissed criticisms that he had enjoyed undue privileges on the Hawaii trip and contended that the chartered flight was merely a normal dealing between the Secretariat of the Prime Minister, which paid for his air travel, and the state firm THAI.
