Brief Sentence Suits the Crime to a Tea
Associated Press
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — A gardener was sentenced to 15 minutes in prison for telling a police officer there was a bomb in the president’s office.
The gardener, Basil Von Dieman, 42, told a magistrate’s court Wednesday that he was only joking when he made the comment to a policeman Jan. 28 while working outside President Pieter W. Botha’s office in Cape Town.
Magistrate P.M. Louw sentenced Von Dieman to three years in prison but suspended the sentence except for the 15-minute period before the court’s recess for morning tea.
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