As an aside, I wonder how much of his sentence has to do with his British lineage, and bitterness over the Falklands War. It seems a little odd for prosecution and the authorities to display little leniency or empathy, and understanding those undertones, it gives me a bit of the us-vs.-them heebie-jeebies.
Here in Argentina, Falklands/Malvinas are the first thing people associate with Britain. A British friend of mine was trying to persuade her (Argentine) landlord to fix the roof in her apartment, and he started yelling at her about the Malvinas. The dominant stereotype of Englishpeople is not that they have terrible food or that they drink a lot of tea but that they are pirates who want to steal offshore oil that legitimately belongs to Argentina and who keep invading Argentina over and over. There is actually a suburb of Buenos Aires whose actual name is "Malvinas Argentinas".
If you're talking about public perception in England, I'm sure you're right. But the case was here in Argentina.
