Caning sentence for German vandals in Singapore
Singapore has sentenced two German men to three strokes of a rattan cane and nine months in prison after they were found guilty of vandalising a public train carriage, according to court documents.
The two men were identified as 22-year-old Andreas Von Knorre and 21-year-old Elton Hinz.
They entered a Singapore train depot at night in November and sprayed paint on a train that was parked there, the court records said.
The duo then left Singapore, were later spotted by police in Bangkok, and were eventually arrested in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and extradited back to Singapore, according to The Straits Times and other media reports.
They have been in jail since November and their sentence will be backdated until then.
Singapore train operator SMRT suffered roughly 13,650 Singapore dollars (€12,352) in damages from the incident, according to court documents.
The two men are not the first foreigners to be jailed and caned for vandalism. In 2010, Swiss IT consultant Oliver Fricker was jailed five months – a sentence that was later raised to seven on appeal – and received three strokes of the cane, also for vandalising a public train parked at a depot.
