A court sentenced a Pakistani man to seven years in jail after he pleaded guilty to kidnapping and robbing South Africa’s number two diplomat in Malaysia last year, officials said on Wednesday.
Nisar Ahmad Khan (36) was sentenced to three years for his involvement in the kidnapping of South Africa’s deputy high commissioner Cornelius van Niekerk Scholtz and four years for stealing the diplomat’s cheque book, cash and cellphone, a Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.
Sessions Court Judge Akhtar Tahir said during the sentencing hearing on Tuesday that he was forced to mete out a stiff punishment because Nisar’s actions had ”jeopardised the good name of the country,” The Star reported.
A group of men seized Scholtz off one of Kuala Lumpur’s busiest streets on May 23 2004, apparently thinking he was a tourist. He was tied up with wire, beaten, and tortured while the attackers extorted money from him and released him on May 30, police and South African officials said.
Three other Pakistanis and a Singaporean have pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping and confining Scholtz. Their trial has been set down for October 24.
Scholtz was attacked barely a month after arriving in Malaysia to take up his post. He’d previously served in Taiwan, Indonesia and Hungary. – Sapa-AP