A young British woman - along with three other young tourists - has been sentenced to three days in jail and fined £1,000 after posing naked on a sacred Malaysian mountain.
Eleanor Hawkins, 23 - along with Canadian siblings Danielle and Lindsey Petersen, and Dylan Snel from the Netherlands - has already been held in custody for three days leading up to the court appearance and so is now set to be deported. Speaking via Periscope, Sky News Asia Correspondent Mark Stone said the four had been "very relieved" on hearing the verdict.
He added: "They didn't speak to the media but their defence counsel gave us the thumbs-up first and was very pleased."
Earlier in the morning, a handcuffed Miss Hawkins had arrived outside Kota Kinabalu Magistrates' Court in a car driven and guarded by men in black balaclavas in what Stone says "must have been a frightening experience for her".
Miss Hawkins, an aeronautical engineering graduate from Derby, confirmed her name and was then read out the charge that at 6.45am on 30 May she had committed an "obscene act in a public place to the annoyance of others".
According to Stone, who was in court, Miss Hawkins "was very quick" to plead guilty. The other three tourists then also entered guilty pleas.
The court heard the group had been making a large amount of noise and some had urinated in a pond during the incident, offending tribal elders in the area of Mount Kinabalu, a sacred mountain.
The tourists were accused of telling their guides to "go to hell" when they were warned about what they were doing but the group of four denied this.
After a brief adjournment, the judge returned and said he would change the sequence of events for the record, removing accusations that the four had told their guides they were "stupid", to "shut up" and to "go to hell".
The judge instead recorded that the guides were "ignored by (the tourists)".
Prosecutor Jamil Ariffin said a jail sentence would serve as a "deterrent" to others and that it was also "in the public interest".
He added: "Many Malaysians will have seen the photos and their actions have caused annoyance. We expect them to obey the law and respect our culture.
"Just because we extend our hospitality to them it doesn't give them the right to behave like this."
He said he was not seeking to connect the act with the earthquake but that "public sentiment" should be taken into consideration.
Defence counsel Ronny Cham told the court the tourists were "ignorant" of the cultural traditions and the sacred value of where they were.
He added: "They belong to a generation defined by their own peculiarities in the country from where they come from - more freedom and liberty to express their thoughts and ideas and openly express what they really felt and thought.
"They understand the hurt and injury to the feelings and emotion and sentiment of the people of Sabah for which they have very much regret."
Borneo's dominant indigenous tribe, the Dusun, claim the westerners' behaviour on the mountain, regarded by them as the resting place of the dead, upset their gods and caused a 5.9 earthquake days later which killed 18 people and left hundreds stranded.
The four in court today are among 10 people who are alleged to have been involved in the nude stunt, and the other six are still being sought by authorities.
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