Swiss man gets 10 years for insulting Thai king

A SWISS man was jailed for 10 years yesterday for insulting Thailand’s revered king by vandalising his portraits during a drunken spree.

Oliver Jufer, 57, pleaded guilty to five counts of lese-majeste — the crime of insulting a sovereign — after defacing several portraits of King Bhumibol Adulyadej with spray paint in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

Judge Pitsanu Tanbuakli described his actions as a “serious crime”.

Jufer, from Zurich, has lived mainly in Thailand for the last 10 years and is married a Thai woman.

A Swiss foreign ministry spokesman said the Swiss government would not seek Jufer’s release, saying the jail term had been applied according to Thai law.

The Thai palace became more prominent in political life since a military coup in September, conducted with the king’s apparent blessing.

The generals who staged the coup have repeatedly claimed that one of the reasons they ousted elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was because he had been “impolite” to the monarch. He faces three charges of lese-majeste.

Prison sentences are unusual in lese-majeste cases. Those convicted are frequently given royal pardons, but analysts said that with Shinawatra facing similar charges, authorities could not been seen to go easy on Jufer.