A Thessaloniki court yesterday passed down a 15-year jail sentence to a 66-year-old British man found guilty of sexually molesting a schoolboy and trying to molest another.

The man, identified by The Associated Press as John Norman Hardy Foss, was an English teacher, the court heard.

But his two victims, aged 11 and 12, were not his pupils. He lured them into his car in the summer of 2006 before driving them to a remote spot. There he sexually abused one of them and tried to abuse the second, who resisted.

The crime came to light in July 2006 when two women in the neighborhood of Katerini told police they saw the 66-year-old dropping off the boys.

The Briton was arrested and detained until last January when he got a conditional release. In addition to his jail sentence, the 66-year-old was fined 150,000 euros.