Thai Criminal Court on Thursday handed out an unprecedented lèse-majesté ruling, sentencing a man in jail for an attempt to insult the royal family because insulting messages and photos of the royal family was found in his computer.
The court found Kittiton, last name withheld due to privacy reasons, guilty in three offences.
Two offences was for posting twice a lèse-majesté message on a web forum called Internet to Freedom on DangDD.com, a hard-core anti-establishment web forum under username Kenji. He was found guilty under the lèse-majesté law, or Article 112 in the Criminal Code and Computer Crime Act’s Article 14 and was sentenced to five years imprisonment for each offence.
Kittiton has been living behind bars for almost four months. He says he will request for a royal pardorn. Photo courtesy of iLaw
Article 14 of the Computer Crime Act states that If any person commits any offence of the following acts shall be subject to imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine of not more than one hundred thousand baht or both:
(1) that involves import to a computer system of forged computer data, either in whole or in part, or false computer data, in a manner that is likely to cause damage to that third party or the public;
(2) that involves import to a computer system of false computer data in a manner that is likely to damage the country's security or cause a public panic;
(3) that involves import to a computer system of any computer data related with an offence against the Kingdom's security under the Criminal Code;
(4) that involves import to a computer system of any computer data of a pornographic nature that is publicly accessible;
(5) that involves the dissemination or forwarding of computer data already known to be computer data under (1) (2) (3) or (4);
The third offence was for an attempt to insult the monarchy. The prosecutor accused the defendant that the evidence in his computer showed that the defendant had prepared to post another lèse-majesté message on the web forum, but the attempt failed because of the arrest and confiscation of his computer. He was found guilty under Article 112 and Article 80 for attempted offence and sentenced him to three years and four months in jail. Nevertheless, the judges did not give the rationale for their decision.
Article 80 of the Criminal Code states that whoever commences to commit an offence, but does not carry it through, or carries it through, but does not achieve its end, is said to attempt to commit an offence. Whoever attempts to commit an offence shall be liable to two-thirds of the punishment as provided by the law for such offence.
However, the court said, since the defendant has pled guilty and his testimony was beneficial to the trial, the jail terms were reduced to six years and eight months in total.
The defendant said he would not appeal and would request for a royal pardon.
About 20 police officers raided his house in central Samutprakarn province in August 2013, when he was reportedly logged in to his username Kenji on the web forum. The defendant is 51-year-old, owns a wholesale shop in the province
According to iLaw, it was the first recorded case that Article 112 was applied with Article 80 or so-called attempted lèse-majesté.
