FORMER magistrate Alf Webley was jailed for two years yesterday after being found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the Home Office by gaining illegal permits for asylum seekers.

Webley lied to officials using a friend's address as a college in order to claim that nine illegal immigrants, one of whom he was living with, were students, a court heard.

Divorced Webley, 56, a director of Wycombe Race Equality Council from November 1973 and a magistrate on the bench at High Wycombe, had pleaded not guilty. But a jury at Oxford Crown Court took just two hours to convict him after a two-week trial.

The con was uncovered when the Home Office became suspicious of the college they had never seen any advertisements for.

Wye Valley Institute, the fictitious college, was in fact the home of accomplice Isa Ibrahim in Cater Road, Lane End. Ibrahim, who admitted conspiracy to defraud the Home Office at an earlier hearing and will be sentenced today, told detectives Webley was behind the ruse, passing him false applications which he forwarded to the authorities on elaborate college letter-headed paper.

Ibrahim provided false documents stating that the asylum seekers were on a full-time education course and were being monitored.

Webley, of Norwood, London, was convicted of asking his friend to supply false college details between October 1994 and December 1996, which the nine immigrants from Jamaica, St Vincent and Guyana were supposedly attending.

One of the immigrants was Angela Brown who Webley admitted living with "for a couple of nights a week". The court also heard that Alvania Cruz paid Webley £400 for false details after her visit to an aunt expired.

Wilfred Forster-Jones, defending, told the court that as far as his client was concerned the applications he submitted "were perfectly genuine" and that Webley had no idea the college was fictitious.

He said: "He trusted his friends, he trusted in Ibrahim and that trust was misplaced."

Sentencing, Judge Peter Crawford told Webley: "You not once but on a number of occasions participated in supplying false documents. Moreover, it is perfectly plain from the evidence that on some occasions you did that for money.

"It is quite clear that a prison sentence is necessary in your case."

Webley remained emotionless as he was led away to the cells.

Former Mayor of High Wycombe Betty Barratt, who worked alongside Webley in his role as a magistrate, said: "I knew him in the early days when he worked hard in this community. As a magistrate he endeavoured to be fair. I had no idea of any problems that had taken place."

She added: "You speak as you find. I think it is very sad because he did sterling work for community relations. Whether his compassion overcame his judgement in later years I just don't know."

Fact-file on disgrabed ex-magistrate

As a teenager, Alf Webley helped organise strikes for more pay when he was a market goods inspector working for 11p an hour.

Webley followed his wife Monica to Wiltshire, England, from Jamaica in 1962.

Again he organised a strike at a Wiltshire factory because black people were being paid less than their white counterparts.

He became a director of Wycombe Race Equality Council in 1973 and left in August 1998.

He became a magistrate on the High Wycombe bench in July 1977 but has resigned due to the fraud.

During his fight for equality he sat on race relations groups involving the police, and county and district councillors and was a member of local and international Afro-Caribbean groups.