A Greek court has found 12 Britons and two Dutch guilty of espionage today and sentenced them to between one and three years for watching activities at Greek military bases during a "plane-spotting" expedition.
Judge Fotoula Fotopoulou sentenced six Britons and two Dutch to three years in jail for espionage but suspended the sentence pending appeal.
The other six Britons were sentenced for complicity to the crime and were handed one-year suspended sentences.
When arrested last November, the tourists insisted they were simply plane-spotters - aviation enthusiasts who make a hobby out of collecting aircraft identification numbers and photographs.
The pastime is popular in Britain but is little known in the rest of the world.
The defendants had based their defence on the assertion the information they had gathered was already in the public domain.
AFP