Four white South African policemen were sentenced today to a combined total of 17 years in prison for setting their dogs on three black Mozambicans in an animal training exercise.
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"The act was cruel and sadistic. They laughed and treated it as a joke. The three witnesses (Mozambican victims) are clearly emotionally scarred and it was obviously intensly traumatic," Judge Willem van der Merwe said.
The policemen were sentenced to effective jail terms ranging from five years to four years each.
Robert Henzen, 32, Eugene Truter, 28, Jacobus Smith, 31 and Lodewyk Kock, 32, were found guilty last week of seriously assaulting three Mozambican illegal immigrants in 1998.