5 French teens sentenced to prison for firebombing bus
AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France: Five teenagers were convicted and sentenced to up to nine years in prison Friday for firebombing a bus in Marseille in an attack that nearly killed a passenger.
In the October 2006 attack, a group of teens poured gasoline around the bus and set in on fire while passengers were still inside. It was the most violent of several bus burnings around the anniversary of riots that had raged through poor neighborhoods nationwide in 2005.
The court for minors in Aix-en-Provence in southern France sentenced the youth who started the fire to nine years in prison and the two who poured the gasoline to seven years.
One teen was handed four years in prison plus one year suspended, while another was given a three-year sentence plus two years suspended. A sixth teen on trial was acquitted.
Prosecutors had requested sentences of between five and 15 years in prison for the six defendants. All were minors at the time of the attack, though two are now 18.
Translate that to here, and these “youths” would have gotten more than the longest prison term that the prosecutors requested. Perhaps it should have occurred to the prosecutors to ask for terms longer than 15 years. Then again, the two that started the fire got nine years, while those who poured the gasoline only got seven — as if pouring the gasoline is that much more innocuous.
