US prosecutors are to appeal a 21-month jail sentence given to a former top Northern Ireland civil servant who tried to arrange sex with a 14-year-old girl.
Stan Mallon (62), the former acting chief executive of the Ulster-Scots Agency, escaped the maximum sentence of over four years after a judge ruled in March he was suffering a "diminished capacity" at the time of his arrest in an FBI sting operation in Chicago.
The US District Attorney's Office in Chicago had wanted the father of five to serve a 51-month sentence and has filed a notice of appeal to the court.
Mallon was arrested in March 2002 after arranging on the Internet to meet an FBI agent posing as a 14-year-old girl named "Marny" in his hotel room during a stopover on the way to Washington.
He had bombarded the "girl" with 17 emails in 24 minutes and had posed on the Internet as the rich 42-year-old president of a biotech company.
The civil servant from Crumlin, Co Antrim, wept last month when Judge Joan Gottschall at the US District Court in Chicago ruled his behaviour was an "aberration" from his otherwise law-abiding life.
Mallon was acting chief executive of the Ulster-Scots Agency until his arrest last March.
PA