A Bangkok court on Wednesday acquitted the founder of Thailand’s monarchist “Yellow Shirt” protest movement of royal insult charges for repeating excerpts from a speech by a political rival.
Sondhi Limthongkul, one of Thailand’s most controversial political figures, had “no intention” of breaching strict lese majeste laws in his 2008 comments, according to one of the judges in the capital’s Criminal Court.
“The court has found that the defendant quoted parts of another person’s speech with the intention to call for police to take legal action against that person,” she said at the hearing, attended by around 50 supporters of the nationalist Yellows.
“The defendant’s action was not intended to insult the monarchy.”
Media mogul Sondhi said the charges against him originated from unspecified political rivals.
“There is an effort to put me in jail,” he told reporters, alleging that some elements in the court system had worked in collusion with politicians.
Protests by the Yellow Shirts helped to trigger a coup by royalist generals in 2006 that ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, Sondhi’s longtime rival.