The man who helped convicted murderer and paedophile Phillip John Smith get a fake passport has been jailed for 18 months.
Christopher Ryan Clifton, 25, was sentenced in Whanganui District Court today for an offence under the Passport Act, as well as possessing an offensive weapon and threatening to kill.
Clifton was a reference for Smith's passport. He was asked by the Passport Office to confirm Smith lived at an address in Palmerston North, when in fact he was in jail.
Smith, who was serving life imprisonment for the 1995 killing of the father of a boy he had been sexually abusing, used a passport to make a dramatic escape to South America.
He was caught in Rio de Janeiro on November 13 a week after fleeing New Zealand - at first to Chile and then Brazil - while on temporary release from Spring Hill Prison in South Auckland.