Jatupat “Pai Dao Din” Booyapatraksa has confessed and the Khon Kaen Court will hand down the sentence on Tuesday afternoon, according to his lawyer.
He was charged with lese majeste and violating the computer crime law for sharing a BBC Thai Facebook post on His Majesty the King's biography which was also shared by 2,000 others at the time. He also quoted it on his Facebook without adding comments.
The 26-year-old student activist was brought to court at 9am on Tuesday for the second round of prosecutor witness hearings which, like the first round, was to be conducted in-camera.
Shortly after Mr Jatupat entered the courtroom, his lawyer came out to tell his parents that the ruling would be read in the afternoon because Mr Jatupat had confessed before the examination of the witnesses.
His parents declined to comment.
Mr Jatupat, 26, is one of the student activists of the Dao Din group based in the Northeast, which had helped villagers campaign and fight to protect their land and natural resources. Shortly after the 2014 military coup, the group staged protests against the junta.
He was arrested in Chaiyaphum on Dec 3 last year on a warrant based on a complaint filed by Lt Gen Phitakphon Chusri, deputy chief of the Operations Directorate at the 33rd Military Circle in Khon Kaen province.
At the time, Mr Jatupat was facing four other lawsuits, all for opposing the military junta.
He denied all charges. He was moved to Khon Kaen the next day and the court granted him bail on a 400,000-baht surety.
His bail was revoked on Dec 22. The court decided he had made satirical Facebook comments challenging authorities and failed to delete the original post of the king's profile.
His 10 subsequent bail requests have been denied. His trial began on June 30 this year.
In mid-April 2017, Mr Jatupat was awarded the prestigious 2017 Gwangju Prize for Human Rights, selected by the May 18 Memorial Foundation of South Korea.
