Thai “Red Shirt” fugitive surrenders at last

Remember this guy?

Anyone who followed Bangkok's violent 2010 anti-establishment "Red Shirt" protests should.

He's Arisman, a former pop crooner-turned-beefy Red Shirt leader who famously eluded arrest by rappelling from his hotel room on a rope.

To plagiarize my own description of Arisman in the L.A. Times, he is "variously described as a provocateur, enforcer, go-to guy and loose cannon."

Speeches from the Red Shirt stage ranged from tedious and didactic to wildly inspriing but Arisman struck an aggressive note that could always get the crowd roiling. He is perhaps best known for suggesting that his followers could all fetch one liter of gasoline each and turn Bangkok into a "sea of fire."

Arisman fled to Cambodia in May, 2010, once the crackdown commenced. But today, according to the Bangkok Post, he surrendered to police.

It will be interesting to see whether the passage of time will diminish his charges and limit his exposure to several high-profile Red Shirt occupations of a hotel complex and parliament. After all, "occupying" has become much more en vogue since Arisman fled.