Man claimed he was off to train as mercenary.

Press, 20 October 1987, Page 22

Man claimed he was off to train as mercenary.

PA ' Dunedin A man who said he was going bush to train as a mercenary was jailed yesterday for 18 months. Guy Mitchell Boardman, aged 26, a screenprinter, had earlier been found guilty of unlawfully possessing explosives and having his face blackened by night without lawful excuse. “I’ll be back,” Boardman told Judge Jamieson after being sentenced in the District Court at Dunedin. Boardman was handcuffed by prison officers as he was led from the dock and out of the courtroom. He was found guilty of the two offences by a District Court jury last month. The jury found him not guilty of a related charge alleging possession of an offensive weapon. Police officers arrested Boardman after he was

seen at a city service station shortly after 3 a.m. on August 23. He had a blackened face and was carrying a bush knife. A search of the vehicle he was travelling in revealed 20 sticks of gelignite, 21 detonators and a coil of safety fuse. Boardman’s explanation for the items was that he was going to “go bush” near Te Anau so he could experiment with the explosives in the course of training himself to be a mercenary. , Mr Bernard O’Driscoll, counsel for Boardman, argued that the jury, while finding the prisoner guilty, might still have accepted there was no more sinister purpose behind Boardman’s blackened face and the possession of the explosives than he claimed. Mr O’Driscoll asked Judge Jamieson to consider the imposition of a

community care programme as penalty. Mr Maurice Mitchell, for the Crown, said Boardman bad 60 convictions over a 10-year period, many of them for burglary and offences of Violence.*.. .. There had been no evidence which supported to any degree Boardman’s claim that he was about to leave Dunedin for the bush. . " Judge Jamieson said that after thinking long and hard about the matter he had decided the . incident was much more sinister 'that i Boardman would have him believe. On the explosives charge, Boardman was jailed for 18 months, with a concurrent 12 months term for having his face blackened. .He was convicted and discharged on a charge of paving cannabis on the same day.