BBC journalist faces defamation case in Thailand

BANGKOK: A British journalist with the BBC faces up to five years in a Thai jail after a lawyer brought a criminal defamation case against him over an investigation into fraud on a popular tourist island.

Rights groups say the case exposes how Thailand’s defamation and computer crime laws scupper investigative journalism and make it difficult to expose wrongdoing in an endemically corrupt country.

The prosecution was sparked by a 2015 report by Jonathan Head, the BBC’s South-East Asia correspondent, looking at how two foreign retirees were scammed out of their properties in Phuket.

Head appeared in a Phuket court yesterday alongside one of the victims, British national Ian Rance who is a joint defendant in the prosecution. Both pleaded not guilty.

The man bringing the prosecution is Pratuan Thanarak, a Phuket lawyer who featured in the BBC’s report looking at how Rance lost lucrative properties. — AFP