判刑理由書撮要(由AI生成)
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The written judgment stated that the six defendants, between 3 and 5 February 2020, had rented a hotel room on Nathan Road near Yau Ma Tei and had made multiple trips to hardware stores and convenience stores to purchase petrol, sulphuric acid, liquefied petroleum gas cylinders, towels, funnels and other tools for making petrol bombs; on the night of 4 February, five of them, dressed in dark clothing, set up a roadblock at the junction of Nathan Road and Gansu Street and threw five lit petrol bombs, causing a fire, before changing their clothes and dispersing. The police recovered ten petrol bombs, petrol, corrosive liquids, liquefied petroleum gas cylinders, tools and other items from the defendants and their room, and found instructional guides and photographs of the six of them together on their mobile phones.
The maximum penalty for arson is life imprisonment, and possession of an article with intent to destroy or damage property carries a maximum sentence of ten years’ imprisonment; the usual sentencing range for arson cases without injury or loss of life is four to six years’ imprisonment.
The defendants’ actions were planned and involved division of labour; the use of petrol bombs and corrosive substances in a busy district was extremely dangerous and, if out of control, could pose a serious threat to life and property, and were intended to incite social violence. Therefore, a severe sentence was required as a deterrent.
Given the exceptional circumstances of the case, the defendants’ guilty pleas and the inadequacy of general mitigation to reduce their culpability, the court, based on the principles of protecting public safety and deterrence, fixed the sentencing benchmarks at five years and six months for arson and four years for the possession offence, and then reduced these to three years and eight months and two years and four months respectively, with six months to run concurrently, resulting in a total combined sentence of fifty months.
The defendant was convicted of arson and possession of an article with intent to destroy or damage property, and was ultimately sentenced to fifty months’ imprisonment. (Translated from Chinese to English by AI)
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