Ushuaia, Argentina - Jeremy Clarkson and members of the Top Gear team who went to Argentina with a Porsche bearing a number plate said by some to refer to the 1982 Falklands War could face three years in jail over the incident.
Appeal court judges in Tierra del Fuego have reversed a decision not to press ahead with a charge of falsification and ordered the reopening of a criminal investigation into the row, fuelled by the number plate, H982 FKL. After their successful appeal, prosecutors are seeking a three-year prison sentence.
Clarkson, who has since been axed from the show, and co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May fled the city of Ushuaia in October 2014 as anger boiled over when protesters took the number plate to refer to the Falklands War and the year it took place.
Falklands veterans accused him of goading them with the registration number on the Porsche he drove in the country.
ABANDONED
The Porsche was later found abandoned with a different plate which has led prosecutors to claim a law banning changes in the registered details of vehicles was broken. Normally it is illegal to change plates on a car, but an Argentinian judge had ruled that Top Gear did not act in “bad faith”.
The BBC denies the car was bought for its plate or that it was changed after purchase.
The Independent
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