Retired businessman Christopher Tappin had been locked up in Allenwood prison, Pennsylvania, since January. The 66-year-old millionaire is the former president of Kent Golf Union. After battling extradition, he will complete his 33-month sentence in UK jail. Claims he was ‘broken’ by a jail ‘teeming with rats and cockroaches and run by gangs’.
Returned: Millionaire Christopher Tappin, 66, had been locked up in Allenwood prison, Pennsylvania, since January, but will now complete his 33-month sentence in a British jail
A retired businessman who battled extradition before he was jailed in America for smuggling arms to Iran has been returned to the UK.
Millionaire Christopher Tappin, 66, had been locked up in Allenwood prison in Pennsylvania since January, but will now complete his 33-month sentence in a British jail.
The lawyer for the former Kent Golf Union president said he had been ‘broken’ by his experience in a jail ‘teeming with rats and cockroaches and run by gangs’.
Mr Tappin’s wife Elaine, 64, who has a rare autoimmune disease called Churg-Strauss syndrome, is said to be ‘relieved’ at the repatriation as her chronic illness left her unable to travel to America to visit him in jail.
The father of two is currently in Wandsworth Prison, South London, less than an hour from their home near Orpington in Kent.
Mr Tappin’s lawyer, Karen Todner, who has also represented computer hacker Gary McKinnon, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Mr Tappin seemed broken by his experience.
‘For six weeks while his repatriation was being approved, he was moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, a prison which is teeming with rats and cockroaches, and run by gangs.
[…]
