SYDNEY, Feb 21: An Australian writer jailed for insulting the Thai royal family flew home to a tearful reunion with his family on Saturday after being pardoned by the king and freed from jail.

Feeling “bewildered, dazed and nauseous”, Harry Nicolaides touched down in the city of Melbourne after spending five months in a Bangkok prison on charges of slandering the Thai monarchy.

Thai officials said 41-year-old Nicolaides was released on Friday evening after officials approved a royal pardon — the result of intense lobbying by Canberra.

“I was informed I had a royal pardon and asked to kneel before a portrait of the king — a royal audience of sorts,” Nicolaides told reporters on arrival at Melbourne airport.

“A few hours before that I was climbing out of a sewerage tank that I fell into in the prison.”

“I ran out of tears but I never ran out of hope or love,” he added, after an emotional homecoming with his family.

Nicolaides was sentenced to three years jail after pleading guilty to lese majeste, or slandering the monarchy, in his 2005 novel titled “Verisimilitude”.

He expressed anger, confusion and frustration at his imprisonment, saying Australians enjoyed “rare privileges” of democracy and free speech.

His lawyer, Mark Dean, said the previous Thai administration had imprisoned Nicolaides to send a strong message of intolerance to dissent, at the height of political unrest in Bangkok.

“I think it’s fair to say that Harry was a political prisoner, and that the reasons for the commencement of this case against him were inextricably linked to the political crisis in Thailand in August 2008,” Dean said.—AFP