A man has been sentenced to serve 30 years in prison for insulting the Thailand monarchy on Facebook.
A law known as lèse-majesté, or ‘injured majesty’, states that anyone that insults the king or the queen faces up to 15 years of imprisonment for each and every insult.
Pongsak Sriboonpeng, aged 48, has been found guilty of posting messages and pictures that insulted and defamed the monarchy six times. He was initially sentenced to 10 years in prison for each insult, but the 60-year sentence was halved after he pleaded guilty of the accusations brought upon him.
Mr. Pongsak does not have the right to appeal the sentence, so it appears that he will have to face the next thirty years in prison, even though his lawyer argued that he has been certified „as mentally ill for more than ten years”, and that this fact should play a major role in reducing his sentence even more.
This case has not been the first of its kind and it will most likely not be the last. A Thai businessman was also sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment in April for posting a similar message on the social network.
Octavian Cătuşanu
Sursa foto: cnn.com