BANGKOK: An elderly Thai man was jailed by a military court on Friday for scrawling graffiti in a shopping mall toilet critical of the country’s junta leaders and its revered king. Thailand’s monarch Bhumibol Adulyadej, 87, is protected by one of the world’s toughest royal defamation rules under which anyone convicted of insulting the king, queen, heir or regent faces up to 15 years in prison on each count.

Ophas Chansuksei, a 67-year-old pin-badge vendor, received a year and a half sentence for writing anti-monarchy and anti-government messages in an eastern Bangkok mall last October. The judge described the comments as “false” and said they “lowered the value of the

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