Four French anthrax hoaxers were sentenced to jail or fined today for sending suspect letters containing white powder to scare the recipients.
The first man, a union official, was sentenced in Marseille to one month in jail and given a five-month suspended sentence for sending a letter to an abritator there because he disagreed with his decision.
The second person, a former police officer in southwest France, was also jailed for one month and given a seven-month suspended term for sending a letter with white powder to a police supervisor. The 43-year-old man sent the letter in protest at his recent dismissal from his job as a lifeguard and teacher at a swimming pool.
In a third case, a 24-year-old woman was given a six-month suspended sentence and fined in the northeast city of Nancy for putting baking powder in a letter she had received from a trucking company. She then complained to the post office she had been the victim of an attack with "white powder."
The final case saw an 18-year-old man in Rouen, northwestern France fined €760 for sending one of his neighbors an envelope containing white powder and a picture of Osama bin Laden.
He was also sentenced to 240 hours of community service.
Last week there were more than 1,000 such alerts, but numbers have since fallen back sharply amid a series of high-profile prosecutions of hoaxers.
AFP