WARDER HELD IN JAIL DRUGS BUST

A PRISON officer is at the centre of a major police inquiry into allegations of corruption at one of Britain's top-security jails.

The 43-year-old warder has been accused of supplying cannabis and mobile phones to inmates at Belmarsh Prison in South London.

He was arrested earlier this month and interviewed by officers from Scotland Yard's specialist crime-fighting unit S06. He was bailed to reappear at a London police station on November 1.

The suspect's home was searched by police, and prison sources say he was found in possession of a mobile phone, a quantity of drugs and pounds 400 in cash. Also seized was correspondence allegedly linking him with a relative of a man being held on remand at Belmarsh accused of drug dealing.

Disgraced Tory peer Jeffrey Archer, 62, spent 21 days at the prison after being sentenced to four years for perjury.

In his controversial jail diaries, written in Belmarsh, he tells of the prison's institutionalised drug culture and how he was threatened by hardened dealers.

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