The Thai Appeal Court has sentenced a man who hacked the Constitutional Court website and renamed it “Kangaroo Court” to one year and six months in prison without suspension and fined him 87,277 baht for damages. He was later reportedly granted bail.

The Constitutional Court’s website was hacked on 11 November 2021 after it ruled that calling for monarchy reform is to be considered treason. It was renamed “Kangaroo Court,” meaning a court that ignores accepted standards of law and justice. The site's content was also replaced with a YouTube video of the song “Guillotine” performed by the American hip-hop band Death Grips. The site then went down for several days before coming back online.

On 14 November 2021, Wachira (last name withheld), a 33-year-old who lives in Ubon Ratchathani, was arrested and charged under the Computer Crimes Act with wrongfully accessing a computer system, wrongfully accessing computer data with specific security measures; damaging, destroying, or revising someone else’s computer data; and blocking, deferring, obstructing or interfering with the computer system of someone else and causing it to fail.

The Criminal Court in 2022 found Wachira guilty and sentenced him to three years in prison. His sentence was then reduced to one year and six months because he confessed. The Court did not suspend his sentence on the grounds that he damaged the reputation of an organisation in the justice system and the people’s trust in the Constitutional Court, thereby damaging the justice system, and so he should be punished and made an example so that others will not commit the same offence.  

The Office of the Constitutional Court originally sued Wachira for 10,288,972 baht in compensation, 10 million of which was for reputational damage.

The court subsequently ordered Wachira to pay 87,227 baht in damages to the Constitutional Court, and dismissed the motion for the 10 million baht penalty for reputational damage because Wachira was not charged with defamation, and so any damage to the Constitutional Court’s reputation was not a direct result of his offence under the Computer Crimes Act.

He decided to appeal the case.

The Criminal Court on 21 January ruled to uphold the initial verdict to sentence Wachira to one year and six months in prison without suspension, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.

The Court concluded that he attempted to access and disable the website, which stopped working for 104 days. An outsourced service had to be hired at the rate of 838 baht per day to create a temporary website.

Wachira was later granted bail pending appeal to the Supreme Court.