How she fled before she appeared in court in August.

Thailand’s Supreme Court has sentenced former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to five years’ jail after finding her guilty of negligence over a rice subsidy scheme her government set up to help farmers.

Nine judges were still delivering the verdict on Wednesday when news of the sentence leaked to Thai media.

The sentence will anger millions of supporters in Yingluck’s “Red-Shirt” movement ahead of elections promised next year by the military that staged a coup to topple her democratically elected government after months of political unrest in 2014.