Appeal for longer internet child sex sentence

United States prosecutors are to appeal against 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, it emerged today.

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.