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The Criminal Court of Thailand on Tuesday sentenced a former public official to 43 years in prison for sharing videos on social networks in which the royal family of Maha Vajiralongkorn is defamed.
The woman, who worked in the Thai government, has acknowledged the facts and has cut her initial sentence of 87 years in half, which has become the record conviction for defamation of the Thai monarchy.
The defendant, surnamed Anchalee, was arrested in 2015 for uploading 26 times to social networks videos of a critic of the monarchy known by the pseudonym ‘Banpodj’. After spending three years in prison, he was granted bail in 2018 until the trial has been held, according to the newspaper ‘Bangkok Post’.
Thailand has indicted dozens of activists for crimes of lese majesty since November 2020, at which time this type of accusation was resumed for the first time in more than two years based on article 112 of the Penal Code, which includes penalties of up to 15 years in prison. Until now, the longest sentence in the Asian country was 35 years.