The Criminal Court on Monday found a 50-year-old man guilty of lèse majesté for uploading audio clips onto 4shared.com, a file-sharing website, and sentenced him to three years in jail. Since the defendant pleaded guilty, the sentence was halved and suspended for two years.
The court found Chaleaw J. guilty on charges under Article 112 of the Criminal Code and Article 14 of the Computer-related Crime Act.
He was released from Bangkok Remand Prison on Monday evening after being detained for 84 days.
Chaleaw, a full-time tailor, was a self-taught computer geek who listened to red-shirt online radio programmes. As he was busy with his military/police uniform tailoring, he would upload the clips onto the website to save them for later listening.
He insisted that he did not intend to distribute the clips to anyone else and said he was not aware that uploading the clips could be a crime.
He said he has attended red-shirt rallies only a few times.
The problematic clip which led him to be in jail was a podcast programme by red-shirt host named Banphot.
Chaleaw was charged with lèse majesté after being detained for seven days by the military. The court never granted him bail.
He was among 28 people summoned by the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) under Order No. 44, issued on June 1.
During military detention, the authorities accused him of being Banphot, but Chaleaw only confessed to uploading the clips and insisted that he was not Banphot. The authorities then interrogated him three times and also interrogated him using a lie detector, while most of the other detainees were interrogated only once.
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