Australian man jailed in Fiji for gay sex

A gay Australian man will serve two years in prison for admitting to having private, consensual sex with a Fiji man, according to the Australian Associated Press news service. In a statement at the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Fiji magistrate Syed Muhktar Shah said the acts committed by Australian tourist Thomas Maxwell McCoskar, 55, and Fijian Dhirendra Nandan, 23, were "something so disgusting that it would make any person vomit." The two men reportedly met and had sex during the Easter holiday in March in the Fiji city of Nadi, according to the AAP, which cited a report in the Fiji Times. The magistrate told McCoskar, a retired university professor, "With you being a former lecturer, you should have known that such indecent acts are illegal." He added, "If you wanted to have fun, you should have stayed in Australia instead of trying to come to Fiji and exploit our young boys." Gay sex carries a jail sentence of up to 14 years in Fiji. According to the Fiji Times, the two men admitted their actions in court and said they had done nothing wrong. Nandan threatened to commit suicide if he were imprisoned, but it was not clear from the report whether Nandan received the same two-year sentence as McCoskar. The magistrate told Nandan he would have done well to consider the "shamefulness of the crime" beforehand.