Man arrested for lèse majesté Facebook post made under girlfriend’s request

In a raid on a tattoo parlor, police arrested a 16-year-old teenager who allegedly posted a lèse majesté message on a fake Facebook account posing as his girlfriend’s stepmother. The fake account and the post had been made at his girlfriend’s request.

On 29 October 2016, the police of Koh Phangan Police Station in the southern Surat Thani Province arrested a 16-year-old vocational student referred to as ‘Jack’. Jack is accused of opening a fake Facebook account under the name of Rossarin Luckdeenan, a 27-year-old woman who is the stepmother of his girlfriend, and for then posting a message deemed defamatory to the Thai Monarchy on it.

The arrest was made after the police raided a tattoo parlour owned by Rossarin’s husband on 27 October after receiving a report that her Facebook account contained a lèse majesté message, reported Matichon Online.

The officers arrested Rossarin and her husband Thamphurin, aged 33, (surname withheld for privacy) and took them to the police station for interrogation. The police also searched the parlour and confiscated a gun, a laptop and three mobile phones.   

During the interrogation however, Rossarin told the police that the Facebook account with the the lèse majesté message was not hers. She suspected the poser was her teenage stepdaughter referred to as ‘A’.

After the police took A to the police station for interrogation, she confessed to ordering Jack, her boyfriend, to create a fake Facebook account with the name and the image of her stepmother, and to then put up the lèse majesté message on it.

The police accused Jack of breaking Article 112 of the Criminal Code, the lèse majesté law and Article 14 of 2007 Computer Crime Act (a law against the importation of illegal computer content). They will request custody of Jack from the Provincial Court in Koh Samui.

The authorities said that they will interrogate A in detail before further legal proceedings.

 

Police officers raid the tattoo parlor of Rossarin and her husband, Thamphurin, on 27 October 2017 (Photo from Matichon Online)

 

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