2000: Aitken freed from prison early

Former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken has been released from jail after serving less than half of his 18-month sentence

Aitken, 57, was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice in June last year, after the collapse of his libel action against The Guardian newspaper and Granada television in 1997.

He left Elmley prison alone carrying his belongings in a black bin liner just after 08.00 GMT.

Aitken is to be electronically tagged for two months to ensure that he complies with a curfew that confines him to his house between 07.00am and 07.00pm every day.

Aitken declared bankrupt

The former chief secretary to the Treasury in the last Conservative government, Aitken did not speak to press outside the prison and managed to avoid them when he got back to his Westminster home.

He spent the majority of the seven months that he was imprisoned in Standford Hill open jail on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent.

Just before the New Year he was moved to the closed prison at Elmley when officers at Standford Hill discovered a plot by other inmates to drug and photograph Aitken in compromising positions.

He still owes The Guardian and Granada over �1m of the �2m legal costs they incurred during the 1997 libel trial where it emerged Aitken had lied about a stay in the Ritz Hotel in Paris.

Having amassed a personal fortune of �3m Aitken was declared bankrupt in June 1999 as a result of escalating legal costs and an expensive divorce settlement.

An old Etonian and Oxford graduate, tipped for Conservative leadership, Aitken now recognises that he has no future in public life and has enrolled on a two year theology course at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University.

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