PROSECUTORS in Romania are to appeal the sentence given to a cyber blackmailer who drove Co Tyrone schoolboy Ronan Hughes to take his own life.
The 17-year-old from Clonoe, outside Coalisland, died by suicide in 2015 after being tricked into sharing intimate images of himself online.
He took his own life hours after some of the pictures were sent to his friends when he did not pay a ransom.
Iulian Enache (31) was last month sentenced to four years in prison in Romania.
He pleaded guilty to charges of blackmail, as well as producing and distributing indecent images of a child.
The sentence, which under Romanian law means he will serve three years in jail, has been criticised locally as too lenient.
Romania's Directorate for Investigation of Organised Crime and Terrorism has confirmed prosecutors plan to appeal the prison term.
In a statement a spokesman said: "The prosecutor's office has made an appeal to the sentence, considering it was not proportional to the severity of the actions committed."
The PSNI's specialist cyber crime unit traced the computer used to blackmail Ronan to Romania.
Enache was arrested last October in a joint operation between with Romanian police.
From the bedroom of his flat in Timisoara on the Hungarian border, he had concocted three fake identities, pretending to be teenage girls to trick the trusting schoolboy into sharing personal images.
The PSNI has urged any other victims of cyber crime to come forward.
