A Greek-Cypriot fisherman, Pavlos Georgiou, was sentenced yesterday to 15 months in jail for negligently giving the HIV virus that causes AIDS to his British lover, Ms Janette Pink.
The decision, the first by a Cyprus court on a case of this kind, surprised local legal experts who were expecting a suspended sentence on 40-year-old Georgiou.
"This case was so severe that even the maximum penalty as provided by law is evidently inadequate," Judge Antonis Liatsos told Georgiou, who is from the coastal holiday resort of Ayia Napa.
Under a decades-old law enacted to curtail cholera on the island, Georgiou faced a maximum sentence of two years in prison or a £1,900 fine.
Judge Liatsos said the 15-month sentence took into account that Georgiou, who has tested positive for the HIV virus that causes AIDS, was dying.
"He is tragically condemned and it would be expected he would have tried to avoid putting others in the same condition . . . without telling her, he was ejaculating death in her for months," he said.
Georgiou, looking subdued, was immediately escorted from the court and into a police car to be taken to the central prisons in Nicosia.
Georgiou has not developed full-blown AIDS and shows no sign of suffering any disease. He is taking a triple drug regimen designed to delay onset of disease.
Georgiou, a father of four - his youngest child, aged four, is HIV positive - was found guilty of repeated sexual contact with Ms Pink (45), of Basildon, Essex, from January 1994 until she tested HIV positive in October 1994, without telling her of his condition. The accused man had tested positive in 1992.
He had denied the accusation, claiming that Ms Pink was well aware of his condition before they had intercourse. But he admitted to having unprotected sex with her once, when they were both drunk, and at Ms Pink's urging.
The court, describing Ms Pink as an impeccable witness, accepted her testimony in its entirety, including her claim that Georgiou even concealed from her the death of his wife from an AIDS-related illness in August 1994. Georgiou had told her his wife had leukaemia.
It was not immediately known whether Georgiou would appeal, but his lawyer said the evidence given during the trial was flawed.