Military and civilian courts have released more suspects of the lèse majesté law on bail in 2016. However, the number is still less than half.
Since the coup d’état on 22 May 2014, out of 46 suspects of Article 112 of the Criminal Code, the lèse majesté law, who submitted the bail requests, 18 were granted bail by civilian and military courts, according to iLaw, a human rights advocacy group.
Of the total number of 73 lèse majesté suspects documented by iLaw since the 2014 coup, 11 suspects did not submit bail requests because of the lack of financial resource while iLaw does not have information about 16 other suspects.
The statistic compiled by iLaw shows that both military courts and the court of justice granted bail to more suspects of Article 112 in 2016 in comparison to the previous years.
According to iLaw’s data, only three out of 25 people arrested for lèse majesté in 2014 were granted bail while in 2015 the number of the lèse majesté suspects released on bail increased to seven out of the 36 suspects arrested that year.
In 2016, out of 12 additional lèse majesté suspects arrested, eight were released on bail.
