The Appeals Court on Friday upheld the prison term of a human rights activist and magazine editor Somyot Preuksakasemsuk who was earlier sentenced to eleven years in prison on less majeste charge.
in General | September 19, 2014 (148 views)
The Appeals Court on Friday upheld the prison term of a human rights activist and magazine editor Somyot Preuksakasemsuk who was earlier sentenced to eleven years in prison on less majeste charge.
The Appeals Court rejected his claim in the appeal that he did not write the two articles by himself with reason that he continued to allow the publication despite defamation contents.
The court said since he had been in the prison for a year on another defamation case against the former assistant army chief Gen Saprang Kslayanamitr, his prison term will count from last year onwards.
Somyot said he would appeal to the Supreme Court.
He was later escorted back to prison.
Somyot was in 2013 sentenced to eleven years’ imprisonment for less majeste.
His sentence drew protest from the European Union and from numerous human rights groups, including the Amnesty International , which designated him a ‘prisoner of conscience’.
Somyot is a member of the Red Shirts, a movement supporting former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was removed from power in 2006 by a coup d’etat.
In 2010, Somyot, then the editor of the magazine Voice of Thaksin, published two articles under a pseudonym critical of a fictional character interpreted by the court as representing the monarch.
The magazine later went out of business.
Somyot was arrested and imprisoned.
On 23 January 2013, the Criminal Court convicted him of lese majeste and sentenced to a total of eleven years in prison: one year for a suspended sentence for a defamation charge, and five years each for the two counts of violating Article 112, the lese majeste law.
The judge stated, “The accused is a journalist who had a duty to check the facts in these articles before publishing them. He knew the content defamed the monarchy but allowed their publication anyway”.