A British man who has spent six years in a Thai prison after being wrongly convicted of manufacturing ecstasy has been released and could be home within the next week, it emerged yesterday.
Jody Aggett, 30, was arrested along with his pregnant Thai girlfriend, Ramphia Lo, in 2001, and charged with manufacturing and possessing narcotics.
He had met Ms Lo while backpacking and had been intending to bring her back to the UK before she gave birth. But by the time they arrived in Bangkok, she was eight months pregnant and could not travel, so they stayed rent-free in a flat above a travel agency in return for opening and closing the shop each day.
They did not know that the agency's owner - a dual Canadian and Dutch citizen known as Adrian - had been using the building to make ecstasy. The couple were arrested alongside Adrian and his Thai girlfriend when police raided the building in November 2001. After being ordered to sign what Mr Aggett's family say amounted to a false confession - which had not been translated from Thai - Mr Aggett was found guilty of being part of the plot. He and Ms Lo were sentenced to death, although the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2003. Their son, Ryan, was born behind bars, but now lives with Mr Aggett's parents, Lorna and Tony, in Swindon.

Full story - Guardian Online (http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330680695-103690,00.html)