BBC journalist faces five years jail for Thailand reporting

The BBC's Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head is being prosecuted for criminal defamation by a Thai lawyer. - AFP/file

Bangkok (AFP) - 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 broad defamation and computer crime laws scupper investigative journalism and make it difficult to expose wrongdoing in a country where corruption is endemic.