Jeffrey Archer gets 4-year jail sentence

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JULY 19. Best- selling novelist and controversial politician, Lord Jeffrey Archer's career was in ruins today after he was jailed for four years for concocting a false alibi to win a &Pound 500,000 libel case against a tabloid 14 years ago. He was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice, and the judge curtly told him that the charges represented ``as serious an offence of perjury as I have had experience of and have been able to find in the books''. As he prepared to start his prison life, barely hours after he was found guilty, his loyal readers were reminded of the first line of a novel in which he wrote:``Let me explain why I am in jail.''

This afternoon, nobody needed to know; and he himself was the least surprised. His biographer, Mr. Michael Crick suggested that Lord Archer had been expecting the worst and when the verdict was delivered at the Old Bailey he showed no emotion beyond a quick glance at his wife Mary who simply stared at the floor. His solicitor later announced that the family was ``shocked and disappointed'' and would appeal against the verdict.

The judgment brought to an end one of the most high- profile court cases in Britain's recent legal history, bringing down the curtain on a story that began in 1986-1987 when the Daily Star alleged that Lord Archer had slept with a prostitute, Monica Coghlan, in a London hotel. Lord Archer, then a rising a Tory politician, sued the tabloid and produced an alibi showing that he was actually having dinner with Mr. Ted Francis, a TV producer, when he was alleged to have been with Coghlan. That alibi, plus a bravura performance by his wife who testified for his loyalty, won him the case.

The story may have ended there but then it took a turn which could have come straight from an Archer novel. One fine morning, the loyal and trusted Mr. Francis decided to spill the beans and he told the News of the World that Lord Archer had cooked up the alibi. His reason for breaking the silence, he said, was Lord Archer's decision to contest for the Mayor of London. He said his conscience could not allow him to sit back and let a man, who had lied his way through the court, to become the Mayor. In its ``scoop'' the News of the World quoted Mr. Francis as saying that he was paid to lie which made him a partner in crime. In the case that followed, he was made a co-defendant and accused of perverting the court of justice.

But on Thursday, Mr. Francis was acquitted and as he walked free Lord Archer merely chewed his lower lip. Lord Archer, on the other hand, was also ordered to pay œ175,000 in costs and the Daily Star which had brought the case against Lord Archer demanded that the œ500,000 which it had paid to Lord Archer should be returned to it along with interest on it over the past 14 years. The trial which lasted six weeks turned into a virtual exhumation of Lord Archer's private life, including his many affairs. The most damaging testimoy came from his former personal assistant, Ms. Angela Peppiatt, who told the court that Lord Archer made her forge diaries to invent the crucial alibi. Her account of his personal life had all the ingredients of an Archer plot - lies, betrayal, sex, deception. But in yet another riveting performance, Lady Archer stood by her husband. She also feigned ignorance of the ``forged'' diary which, in the event, became a decisive evidence.

Lord Archer himself refused to take the stand despite the court's warning that this could be construed by the jury as an admission that he had nothing to say in his defence. Those who have known Lord Archer said today that he had been a victim of his own personality which his biographer described as ``complex and flawed''. His belief in the power of money and his own cleverness - charm, energy and ambition - was widely seen to have contributed to his ``fall''.

For someone who has been the toast of London's social circle and rose to become the deputy chairman of the Tory Party, Lord Archer cut a lonely figure today and few even among his admirers shed tears. At the same time, few believed that this was really the end of the road for the 61-year-old multi-millionaire. The most widely shared conjecture was that his jail experience could well give him material for another best-seller.

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