BANGKOK (AP) — An appeals court in Thailand on Friday reversed the acquittals of five people charged with impeding the motorcade of the country’s queen during pro-democracy demonstrations in 2020, handing them prison sentences ranging from 16 to 21 years.
The case stemmed from an incident on Oct. 14, 2020, on the fringes of a rally in Bangkok that was calling for democratic reforms, including to the privileges of the country’s powerful monarchy.
Prosecutors had alleged that the five knew that the royal motorcade — with a limousine carrying Queen Suthida, the wife of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and his son, Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti, then 15 years old — was due to pass the area and that they had tried to block its route.
They were also were accused of scuffling with police officers who were securing the path and urging other protesters to sit in the road to stop the entourage’s passage.
The original case in Bangkok Criminal Court was brought under a rarely used law targeting actions intended “to harm the liberty of the queen, the heir apparent and the regent.” It specifies different levels of offensive behavior, with the gravest one punishable by the death penalty.
That court ruled in June 2023 that the evidence and testimony did not support the charges against the five, a rare legal victory for Thailand’s pro-democracy movement, which has often faced an uphill battle in the royalist conservative courts.
However, the Court of Appeal on Friday found it credible that all five defendants knew it was the queen’s motorcade and that they had engaged in conduct obstructing it, according to a summary of the verdict prepared by the legal aid group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.
It judged that although they did not commit the highest degree of the offense, because the car was able to pass, they were still punished with the strictest allowable penalty because they had violated several laws in jointly attempting to commit an act of violence against the queen’s liberty.
Ekachai Hongkangwan, a veteran activist and social critic who has been attacked several times by unknown assailants, was sentenced to just over 21 years imprisonment, while the other four defendants each received 16 years.
Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said applications for bail were being filed for all five pending a further appeal to the Supreme Court.
The royal family is traditionally revered in Thailand. Its sacrosanct status is backed by a royal defamation law, which carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years, and is more actively prosecuted.
FILE - A vehicle with members of the Thai royal family onboard passes through a road where anti-government protesters gathered outside the Government House in Bangkok, Thailand on Oct. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)
FILE - Student activist Bunkueanun Paothong, right, with activist Ekachai Hongkangwan talks to reporters before leaving a criminal court in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, June 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, file)
NUUK, Greenland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has turned the Arctic island of Greenland into a geopolitical hotspot with his demands to own it and suggestions that the U.S. could take it by force.
The island is a semiautonomous region of Denmark, and Denmark's foreign minister said Wednesday after a meeting at the White House that a “ fundamental disagreement ” remains with Trump over the island.
The crisis is dominating the lives of Greenlanders and "people are not sleeping, children are afraid, and it just fills everything these days. And we can’t really understand it,” Naaja Nathanielsen, a Greenlandic minister said at a meeting with lawmakers in Britain’s Parliament this week.
Here's a look at what Greenlanders have been saying:
Trump has dismissed Denmark’s defenses in Greenland, suggesting it’s “two dog sleds.”
By saying that, Trump is “undermining us as a people,” Mari Laursen told AP.
Laursen said she used to work on a fishing trawler but is now studying law. She approached AP to say she thought previous examples of cooperation between Greenlanders and Americans are “often overlooked when Trump talks about dog sleds.”
She said during World War II, Greenlandic hunters on their dog sleds worked in conjunction with the U.S. military to detect Nazi German forces on the island.
“The Arctic climate and environment is so different from maybe what they (Americans) are used to with the warships and helicopters and tanks. A dog sled is more efficient. It can go where no warship and helicopter can go,” Laursen said.
Trump has repeatedly claimed Russian and Chinese ships are swarming the seas around Greenland. Plenty of Greenlanders who spoke to AP dismissed that claim.
“I think he (Trump) should mind his own business,” said Lars Vintner, a heating engineer.
“What's he going to do with Greenland? He speaks of Russians and Chinese and everything in Greenlandic waters or in our country. We are only 57,000 people. The only Chinese I see is when I go to the fast food market. And every summer we go sailing and we go hunting and I never saw Russian or Chinese ships here in Greenland,” he said.
Down at Nuuk's small harbor, Gerth Josefsen spoke to AP as he attached small fish as bait to his lines. He said, “I don't see them (the ships)” and said he had only seen “a Russian fishing boat ten years ago.”
Maya Martinsen, 21, a shop worker, told AP she doesn't believe Trump wants Greenland to enhance America's security.
“I know it’s not national security. I think it’s for the oils and minerals that we have that are untouched,” she said, suggesting the Americans are treating her home like a “business trade.”
She said she thought it was good that American, Greenlandic and Danish officials met in the White House Wednesday and said she believes that “the Danish and Greenlandic people are mostly on the same side,” despite some Greenlanders wanting independence.
“It is nerve-wrecking, that the Americans aren’t changing their mind,” she said, adding that she welcomed the news that Denmark and its allies would be sending troops to Greenland because “it’s important that the people we work closest with, that they send support.”
Tuuta Mikaelsen, a 22-year-old student, told AP that she hopes the U.S. got the message from Danish and Greenlandic officials to “back off.”
She said she didn't want to join the United States because in Greenland “there are laws and stuff, and health insurance .. .we can go to the doctors and nurses ... we don’t have to pay anything,” she said adding "I don’t want the U.S. to take that away from us.”
In Greenland's parliament, Juno Berthelsen, MP for the Naleraq opposition party that campaigns for independence in the Greenlandic parliament told AP that he has done multiple media interviews every day for the last two weeks.
When asked by AP what he would say to Trump and Vice President JD Vance if he had the chance, Berthelsen said:
“I would tell them, of course, that — as we’ve seen — a lot of Republicans as well as Democrats are not in favor of having such an aggressive rhetoric and talk about military intervention, invasion. So we would tell them to move beyond that and continue this diplomatic dialogue and making sure that the Greenlandic people are the ones who are at the very center of this conversation.”
“It is our country,” he said. “Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people.”
Kwiyeon Ha and Evgeniy Maloletka contributed to this report.
FILE - A woman pushes a stroller with her children in Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
Military vessel HDMS Knud Rasmussen of the Royal Danish Navy patrols near Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Juno Berthelsen, MP for the Naleraq opposition party that campaigns for independence in the Greenlandic parliament poses for photo at his office in Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Fisherman Gerth Josefsen prepares fishing lines at the harbour of Nuuk, Greenland, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A woman walks on a street past a Greenlandic national flag in Nuuk, Greenland, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
