An Australian writer was sentenced to three years in jail by a Thai court yesterday after he pleaded guilty to insulting Thailand’s revered royal family in a novel, a judge said.
Harry Nicolaides, 41, appeared in a Bangkok court wearing a dark orange prison jumpsuit with his hands cuffed and his feet shackled. He has already been in custody for nearly five months.
“He has written a book that slandered the king, the crown prince and Thailand and the monarchy,” the judge told the court.
“He was found guilty under Criminal Law Article 112 and the court has sentenced him to six years, but due to his confession, which is beneficial to the case, the sentence is reduced to three years,” the judge said.
Leaving the court, Nicolaides told reporters: “I wish my family the best.”
Nicolaides’ lawyer said he would seek a royal pardon for the sentence, the latest in a series of penalties under Thailand’s notoriously harsh laws against insulting the monarchy.
A gaunt-looking Nicolaides earlier told the judge he was guilty of slandering 81-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn.
Nicolaides, who had previously worked as a university lecturer in northern Thailand, was detained at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport departure lounge on Aug. 31 on an arrest warrant issued two-and-a-half years earlier.
The charge relates to a passage in a self-published novel in 2005 titled Verisimilitude.
His family has said that only a handful of copies were ever sold.
“People told me they will make a deal if I plead guilty. I pleaded not guilty last time with advice from someone,” Nicolaides said outside court before the hearing.
“I respect the king of Thailand,” he said. “I was aware there were obscure laws [about the monarchy] but I didn’t think they would apply to me.”
Nicolaides’ Melbourne-based lawyer Mark Dean said his client’s health had deteriorated as a result of five months in prison.
“He has found the circumstances of his imprisonment very challenging,” Dean said. “His physical health has deteriorated, he has lost weight, he has been continually unwell for extended periods of time. And obviously psychologically he has found the experience of being in prison in Thailand very challenging.”
Dean said earlier Nicolaides would immediately appeal for a royal pardon.
In 2007 a Swiss man, Oliver Jufer, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for defacing pictures of the king but was later given a royal pardon and deported.
Successive Thai governments have in recent months intensified the policing of laws against insulting the royal family.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS