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Thursday 17 August 1995   

Impostor is fined for posing as SAS officer

A JUNIOR hospital assistant who posed as an SAS officer and lectured Army recruits on survival techniques appeared in court yesterday.

 Christopher Reynolds, 36, of Castleford, West Yorks, was fined £250 and given a 12-month conditional discharge by Pontefract magistrates after admitting unlawfully wearing a forces uniform - breaching the 1894 Uniforms Act - and stealing field medical kits from the hospital where he worked.

 The court heard that Reynolds, a theatre assistant at Leeds General Infirmary, got the idea for his deception when he visited the Leeds Rifle Association in 1990 and gave an off-the-cuff lecture on the Gulf when the scheduled speaker did not turn up.

 Reynolds wore the uniform of a captain in the Special Air Service or full combat gear, when lecturing on field medicine and survival techniques at local Army and TA bases.

 John Jones, defending, said Reynolds was a man of previous good character who admitted that what he did was foolish. Reynolds, he said, had paid back the value of the medicines to Leeds Infirmary.