Four white former South African policemen who ordered their dogs to attack black detainees as part of a "training exercise" were jailed for four and five years each yesterday. They had videotaped the attack.
Judge Willie van der Merwe described the assault on three Mozambicans - who had been arrested for entering the country illegally - as cowardly, brutal and cruel.
"They disregarded the human dignity of the three [victims]," he said. "They laughed and treated it as a joke. The three are clearly emotionally scarred and it was obviously intensely traumatic."
The policemen had pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated assault. Their relatives shouted in anger as the sentences were announced: "They are crazy!" The Mozambicans sat silently in the courtroom, but one of the policemen wept at the sentence.
The policemen, members of the north-east Rand police dog unit in 1998, were arrested last year after the state television broadcast a video which showed them ordering dogs to savage Gabriel and Alexandre Timane, and Sylvester Cose, as the victims begged for mercy.
The dogs were seen lunging at the face and groin of one of the victims as he screamed. A policemen was filmed knocking the Mozambicans to the ground with punches to the face and calling them "kaffirs". When one of the men tried to defend himself, a policeman kicked his hands away and the dog lunged at his throat.
"The video shocked the world. I am not surprised," the judge said. "The act was cruel and sadistic.
"It must have been terrifying. For years people have been tortured by police. The police neglected their duties by not letting these activities come to light."
In mitigation, a criminologist told the court that the four former police officers - Jacobus Smith, Lodewyk Koch, Robert Henzen and Eugene Werner - were not monsters but victims of a police subculture of violence.
"They were shocked when they first saw the video. They cannot believe it was really them," Ms Irma Labuschagne. said. "They only now came to realise that they actually used live people."
Smith was jailed for five years as the ringleader. The others were each jailed for four years. Henzen and Truter were also convicted of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by falsifying police records.
Two other policemen who have denied responsibility for the attacks will be tried next year.
The three Mozambicans intend to sue the South African government.