Tory candidate: My US jail hell after arrest in FBI arms 'sting'

In a convoy of 4x4s heading out of Las Vegas, Lee Wares thought he was on his way to a trade-show event at a training range just beyond the city limits.

Suddenly, he was dragged from his vehicle by an eight-strong FBI SWAT team. Four machine-guns were held to his head.

It was the beginning of a nightmare that still haunts Mr Wares. For 32 days, he was moved around in shackles from prison to prison in the United States. It took two years for him to prove he was the innocent victim of what turned out to be a huge - and ultimately doomed - FBI operation known as The Africa Sting.

Unbeknown to the successful Brighton businessman, he had been lured to Nevada as part of a fake $15'‰million deal to arm the presidential guard of the Omar Bongo regime in the West African nation of Gabon. The fake deal had been created by the American Department of Justice and run by the FBI.

Mr Wares - now 48 and a Conservative Party candidate for Patcham - was snared by the lies of an American businessman caught breaking anti-bribery laws.

Today, for the first time, Mr Wares tells in his own words how he survived a terrifying journey through the judicial system of the United States.

How a Brighton businessman lost two years of his life after the FBI falsely accused him of corruption