LOS ANGELES, Jan 18: Former US radical Sara Jane Olson was Friday sentenced to at least 20 years in jail for attempting to blow up two police cars 26 years ago, and pleaded not guilty to a separate murder charge.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler handed down two consecutive mandatory sentences of 10 years to life to Olson, but said the state prison board should examine recalculating her sentence amid a dispute over how much jail time she should actually serve.

Immediately after sentencing the mother-of-three who lived as a church-going Minnesota housewife for 23 years before being captured by police in 1999, Fidler arraigned her for the 1975 murder of bank customer Myrna Opsahl during a 1975 heist in Sacramento.

The formal charge came after she and three former alleged comrades in the radical Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), which kidnapped and “co-opted” newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974, were arrested for the 27-year-old crime in a surprise move Wednesday.—AFP