Yardie given £10,000 to fight jail regime

A Yardie gangster known as the Prince of Darkness has been given legal aid to sue for better prison conditions, it emerged today.

Mark Lambie, 33, once the most powerful black gang leader in London, was jailed for 12 years in 2002 after being convicted of kidnapping and torturing two men with a hammer, electric iron and boiling water.

In 1985 he was accused of being part of the mob that murdered Pc Keith Blakelock during the Broadwater Farm riot, though he was eventually cleared.

Lambie is now suing Home Secretary David Blunkett after being upgraded to Category A status-when he was found with a mobile phone at Full Sutton jail in York. Officials claim he was using the phone to organise an escape attempt.

It is understood Lambie was caught with another mobile while in Whitemoor prison, Cambridgeshire, and has now been moved to the top security Frankland jail, County Durham.

He denies the allegations and has been given £10,000 legal aid in his bid to have his Category B status restored.

A Home Office spokesman said Lambie had been given permission to seek a judicial review into the Prison Service decision but this has been temporarily suspended and is expected to resume later this year.

Categorisation is based on the likelihood of a prisoner escaping, whether criminal connections have been severed, and the prisoner's record behind bars, the spokesman said.

"We will be contesting the action," he added. Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, told the Sun: "For him to be given legal aid shows the appalling waste of taxpayers' money." Lambie and Anthony Bourne, 21, led a Yardie gang which kidnapped victims Towayne Morris and Gregory Smith. The pair were seized at gunpoint and tortured. Drugs and money were demanded from them but they escaped and eventually became witnesses for the Crown.