The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday sentenced three people to 17 to 18 years in prison for illegally detaining a fortune teller and his four followers, forcing them to smoke methamphetamine and sexually abusing two of them.

Sok Pov, 35, who has escaped arrest, was sent-enced to 18 years in prison and ordered to pay the five victims a total of 55 million riel in compensation, while Kruoch Samoeun, 32, and her husband Cheng Chanthy, 30, each received 17 years.

Samoeun and Chanthy admitted in March that they knew Pov, through whom they had contacted the fortune teller, Khy Pheary, because he had cheated them out of $1,101 - a claim Pheary denies. They denied the charges of rape, forced oral sex and torture.