Hamiltons face probe in rape case

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, AUG. 11. Once the toast of London's exclusive champagne- and-lobster circuit and famously hailed by The Spectator as the ``Parliamentary Wit of the Year'' in 1989, Mr. Neil Hamilton's career has been on a downhill journey for some years now, but on Friday the former Tory minister was in for some more humiliation when he and his wife, Christine, were briefly arrested in connection with an inquiry into a rape case.

Though the couple were out on bail by the evening protesting innocence and dismissing the allegations against them as a `fabrication', the few hours they spent at a police station brought them back into the headlines which they first hit over six years ago when Mr. Hamilton was accused of taking money from Mr. Mohammed Al-Fayed, the controversial owner of Harrods, to ask questions in Parliament.

Mr. Hamilton, who was trade minister in the John Major government, was forced to resign over the cash-for-questions allegation, and his bid to clear his name in court badly backfired leading to bankruptcy and the collapse of a promising political career. Just when Mr. Hamilton thought that things could not get any worse, lightning struck again - this time in the form of a 27-year-old college lecturer who alleged that she was raped by a man known to Mr. Hamilton. She alleged that the Hamiltons were not only present when the rape took place in an east London flat on May 5 but that Mr. Hamilton made lewd gestures while she was being raped and his wife squatted over her. A man in his sixties and believed to be a former employee of the Hamiltons was arrested in connection with the case and is now on bail. The Hamiltons were furious as they came out of the police station on Friday and pointed an accusing finger at their old `enemy' Al-Fayed, and a PR consultant Mr. Max Clifford, to whom the young woman first reported the alleged rape. Mrs. Hamilton, defending her husband a la Mary Archer, pointedly mentioned that Mr. Clifford was a business associate of Mr. Al- Fayed. The Hamiltons' solicitor said they reported to the police by appointment and were fully cooperating with them.

About the allegation, he said: ``It has been said that Mr and Mrs Hamilton were in a flat in Ilford when a young woman was raped. Those allegations have been denied absolutely by Mr and Mrs Hamilton...They have also given the police total access to all their private affairs, their telephone records, their credit card records and suchlike...No charges have been made against any person and certainly no charges have been made against either Mr or Mrs Hamilton.''

Mr. Hamilton said he had never heard of the woman at the centre of the drama and the allegation was a `fabrication'. Mrs Hamilton meanwhile used the occasion to deny another allegation: that she and her husband were seeking divorce. ``The whole thing is absolutely a monstrous fabrication and lie,'' she said declaring that she was very happy to be standing next to her husband.

It had been a long day and as the couple sat down to a supper of takeaway pizzas at their South London flat, the media was digging into the archives to embellish the story. The Times this morning carried a long story, charting the rise and fall of the Tory `high-flyer' once famous for his ``flamboyant taste for the high life and avid publicity seeking''. His career was destroyed by the cash-for-questions scandal, brought into the open by The Guardian, and now bankrupt he and his wife are reported to be selling their home in Cheshire to meet legal bills arising out of his unsuccessful libel case against Mr. Al-Fayed. Friday's humiliation was simply the latest twist in a bizarre tale of personal and professional disaster.

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