Swiss jailed for 10 years for insulting Thai royalty

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND: A Swiss man was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Thursday for defacing images of Thai royalty, a rare prison term for a foreigner convicted under Thailand's tough lese-majeste laws.

Oliver Rudolf Jufer, 57, received 20 years for five acts of lese-majeste, but the judge reduced the term to take into account Jufer's guilty plea.

He had faced a maximum of 75 years in jail. Jufer, a longtime resident of Thailand, was arrested in the northern city of Chiang Mai after black paint was sprayed on several portraits of 79-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, whom many Thais revere as semi-divine, and Queen Sirikit.

Police said Jufer was drunk when he defaced the portraits on December 5, the King's birthday and a national holiday.   

"The court sentences him for defaming the King, which is the most serious crime," Judge Pitsanu Tanbuakli said.

Jufer, in orange-brown prison clothes with iron shackles on his ankles, said nothing to reporters. He has 30 days to appeal.

Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Philippe Jeannerat said the court's 'rigorous' application of the criminal code had been noted in Berne.

A bilateral accord between the two countries normally allowed a person convicted of a crime to serve a jail term in his native country, but any infraction against the King was specifically exempted, he said.

King Bhumibol attended an elite secondary school near Lausanne and university in the lakeside city.

Lese-majeste carries a jail term of three to 15 years in Thailand, one of the few countries which strictly prosecutes anything deemed to demean the royal family.

Other foreigners have occasionally run afoul of the law, but jail terms are rare.

A French businessman was arrested in 1994 for insulting the monarchy during a Thai Airways flight from London with two members of the royal family on board. He was later acquitted.

TOUGH LAW: King Bhumibol, who celebrated 60 years on the throne in June 2006, is revered as a champion of the poor and a pillar of stability during turbulent periods in Thailand's coup-prone history.

Portraits of the King and Queen adorn buildings across the country. Since his Diamond Jubilee, many Thais have taken to wearing yellow shirts, especially on Mondays, the colour associated with Monday, the day of his birth.

Some legal experts say it may be time to reform the lese majeste law, which they say is often abused during times of political turmoil.

In the 1980s, Veera Musikapong was banned from politics for five years after he said in a campaign speech he would have a happier and easier life as a prince than a politician.

He was sentenced to six years in jail, but received a royal pardon and served only a few months.

Last year, before the coup that ousted him, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his enemies hurled accusations of lese majeste at each other, triggering police investigations.

Thaksin, whose alleged disrespect for the monarchy was one of the reasons for the coup, now faces possible charges on three counts of lese majeste which could put him in jail for 45 years.

The law also stifles public debate of the monarchy, despite King Bhumibol's remarks in 2005 that he was not above criticism.

But few Thais have taken the risk, or even dared to call for changes to the law.

"Those who do so will be deemed as showing their disloyalty to the revered monarch, which is a severe accusation," Somchai Preechasinlapakul, deal of the Faculty of Law at Chiang Mai University, said Reuters earlier this month.