Horne: £11,000 bill.

Animal rights activist Barry Horne has left York District Hospital and been moved to a prison in the south of England, the Evening Press can exclusively reveal today.

Following more than a month of treatment, which may have cost the York NHS Trust upwards of £11,000, Horne was taken from the hospital and relocated to HMP Belmarsh, in London.

Firebomber Horne was admitted to the hospital at the end of January after going on hunger strike at Full Sutton Prison where he was serving an 18-year jail term for an arson campaign.

The Evening Press calculates that as Horne's 27-day stay at the hospital in late 1998, after a hunger strike, cost the trust more than £11,000, his most recent visit is likely to have accounted for even more than that figure.

Horne also spent a month in the hospital between mid-April and mid-May last year at an undisclosed cost to the York NHS Trust after yet another hunger strike.

The trust would not give an exact figure for the arsonist's latest stay in the hospital.

Annette Tibbles, a friend of Horne, said that he was moved to the London prison about two weeks ago.

She said: "I was told that people in prison for a certain amount of time, even lifers, must be moved to a different prison about every two years."

Horne began his sentence at Full Sutton Prison in 1996 and went on five hunger strikes.

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