A Dutch man convicted in Canada last year for extorting Port Coquitlam teen Amanda Todd will spend six more years in jail.
Today, Dec. 21, three judges at an Amsterdam courthouse converted Aydin Coban’s Canadian sentence of 13 years to six behind Dutch bars.
Coban was not present at the hearing; his lawyer, Robert Malewicz, told media he would appeal the conversion decision.
Todd's mother, Carol, told the Tri-City News that she is pleased with this morning's Dutch ruling.
"They could have given him zero," she said.
"Six years is like a gift compared to zero, which is what we were expecting. Of course, we all want more but we don't live in the United States. The Dutch are more lenient than Canada, but I'm not disappointed because I know what could have been."
Last October, BC Supreme Court Judge Martha Devlin sentenced the 45-year-old man to 13 years in prison after a jury found him guilty on all five charges:
- extortion
- importing and distributing child pornography
- possession of child pornography
- communicating with the intent to lure a child
- criminal harassment
However, at sentencing, the Crown asked for a judicial stay on the third conviction.
Todd, 15, took her life in 2012 after being tormented for years online by Coban, who used 22 aliases to hide his identity and to harass her family and friends via four social media channels.
A month before she died in her mother’s Port Coquitlam home, Todd posted a video with large flash cards describing her mental health struggles.
In her victim impact statement last year, Carol Todd told the Canadian court how her daughter felt before her suicide — weeks before her 16th birthday.
Justice Devlin said Amanda Todd's name is "now known around the world" because of her video outreach.
"Amanda Todd wanted her voice to be heard," she said while acknowledging Todd's parents' and her brother's suffering as a result of Coban's online abuse.
Coban, who is currently serving an 11-year jail term for similar charges involving 33 young girls and gay men, is due to start serving the Todd sentence next August.
In its ruling today, the Amsterdam judges wrote that "when converting to a Dutch sentence, the court first takes into account the sentence imposed in Canada and its amount.
"When determining the duration of the sentence, the court also takes into account that the Dutch government regularly and emphatically warns that there are great risks associated with committing criminal offences abroad, given the often significantly higher sentences imposed there. By committing the aforementioned offences in Canada, or at least committing the offences against a victim in Canada, the convicted person has taken the risk of being punished more severely than in the Netherlands. This risk is his responsibility."
It added, "Taking everything into account, the court finds a prison sentence of six years appropriate. The sentence is considerably lower than the sentence imposed in Canada because the court also took into account the sentences imposed in the Netherlands in similar cases."
