Former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who lost her job in the 2014 military coup, failed to show up in court to hear the verdict in her corruption trial.  The coup government put out a warrant for her arrest.

With thousands of Yingluck's supporters outside the court, judges rejected her attorney's explanation that she was suffering from vertigo and unable to attend the reading of the verdict because he did not submit a medical certificate. 

Yingluck was last seen on Wednesday at the Wat Rakhang Kositaram Buddhist temple in Bangkok.  On Thursday she posted a social media message urging her supporters to stay at home for Friday's verdict.  At least 3,000 came out anyway.  It's not clear if the former PM is still in the country.

The coup government put Yingluck on trial for a rice subsidy scheme that the conservative and wealthy urban elites claim wasted money and was rife with corruption.  Yingluck's supporters praised the subsidies for evening out the grossly unequal fortunes of the cities and the poor countryside.  if convicted, she faced up to ten years in prison and a permanent ban from politics.

Yingluck's older brother is former prime minister ThaksinShinawatra, who lives in exile after an earlier military coup forced him to flee the country in 2008 to evade a jail term for purported corruption.  The Shinawatras are Thailand's most popular political family.  Their political parties have won every free and fair election since 2001 - the Bangkok conservatives' solution for that is to eliminate Democracy and overthrow the government.