Husband gets longer jail term for drowning wife

SYDNEY - The one-year prison sentence handed to a US citizen who admitted drowning his wife during a scuba dive while honeymooning in Australia was extended to 18 months by a Brisbane appeals court Friday.

Cameron Dick, attorney general in Queensland’s state government, had appealed the lenience of the sentence given Gabe Watson, 32, over the death of 26-year-old Tina Watson on the Great Barrier Reef in 2003.

Chilling video footage inadvertently captured by a fellow diver showed Watson swimming away while his wife of 11 days sank to the ocean floor.

It was alleged at the June trial that Watson had held his wife in a bear hug, turned off her oxygen supply and turned the valve back on when she was dead or nearly dead.

The Alabama bubble-wrap salesman pleaded guilty to manslaughter to head off a murder trial.

The court said Watson had not giving his bride buddy-breathing emergency oxygen, inflated her buoyancy vest or removed lead weights from her belt.

“He virtually extinguished any chance of her survival,” Prosecutor Brendan Campbell told the court.

Watson, who said he panicked, was a certified rescue diver trained in dealing with frightened divers.

The leniency of the sentence caused an uproar in Australia and in the US.

Adding six months to the time Watson is to spend in jail was unlikely to assuage those calling for him to face a murder rap when he returns to the US at the end of his sentence.