Thai man gets additional prison term for royal slur
Print Edition
AN elderly Thai man already jailed for royal defamation was yesterday sentenced to a further 18 months in prison under controversial lese majeste laws for graffiti scrawled in a Bangkok toilet last year, his lawyer said.
Ophas Chansuksei, a 68-year-old pin-badge vendor, is currently serving an 18-month prison term handed down in March over graffiti deemed critical of the monarchy as well as the junta that seized power from an elected government in May last year.
Yesterday, a military court in the capital sentenced him to a further 18 months over similar graffiti scribbled in another toilet on the same day last October in a shopping mall in eastern Bangkok.
“Investigators separated his case into two because he wrote on two separate toilet doors,” said his lawyer Sasinan Thamnithinan from the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.
Ophas was originally sentenced to three years but the prison term was halved because he admitted to the crime and will start the new sentence once the existing one ends in January, she added.
Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 87, is protected by one of the world’s toughest royal defamation rules under which anyone convicted of insulting the king, queen, heir or regent faces up to 15 years in prison on each count.
Lese majeste cases have skyrocketed under military rule.
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