Rehabilitation programme saves anthrax prankster from being jailed

A former postman who filled an envelope with white powdery dust as “a joke”, raising fears of anthrax, was yesterday spared jail by an appeals court.

Marco Risiott, 46, of Ħamrun, committed the crime in October 2001 and received a six-month jail term for it in November 2006. He then appealed the sentence.

He was saved from prison yesterday by the fact he is undergoing drug rehabilitation treatment and would have lost the benefit of supervision had he been jailed.

Mr Risiott had poured some gypsum dust into an envelope together with some newspaper cuttings, placed a German postage stamp on it and put the American Embassy’s address on it, in what he described as a joke on his colleagues in the central mail room. He even scribbled Arabic writing, which he had copied from a sweet wrapper, on the back of the envelope.

However, his sister threw a spanner in the works when she discovered the envelope at home and called in the police fearing it really did contain the deadly bacterium anthrax.

When Mr Risiott returned to find the police and Civil Protection Department personnel at the house he tried to destroy the envelope but was prevented from doing so.

He told the police he planned to pretend to accidentally find it in a bag in the mail room but then immediately tell his colleagues it was a joke.

In the original judgment, the presiding magistrate said the joke occurred at a time when the dangers of anthrax were well known even on an international level and the prank was definitely no joke.

At that time there had been a number of anthrax outbreaks in the US, which were perpetrated by terrorists after infected letters were sent through the postal system and resulted in a number of deaths.

In the appeal judgment yesterday, Mr Justice David Scicluna said Mr Risiott had a long drawn out drug problem. He had recently completed a residential drug rehabilitation programme and was re-entering another one. The judge said he felt it would be in the best interests not only of Mr Risiott but of society too if he were put on probation for three years as no supervision order could be issued with a six-month jail term.