A friend and former employee of Sussex animal rights campaigner Carla Lane has been jailed for helping to stage two bombing campaigns.

David Blenkinsop made incendiary devices which were placed under lorries belonging to an abattoir and cars owned by employees of an animal testing laboratory.

Blenkinsop, 36, of Broadhurst Manor Road, Horsted Keynes, used the devices during two separate incidents in May and August 2000.

Yesterday he was sentenced to five-and-a-half-years in prison.

Oxford Crown Court heard how he admitted helping members of the Animal Liberation Front, who targeted Mutchmeats Livestock Process Plant in Witney, Oxfordshire, and also workers at Huntingdon Life Sciences in Cambridgeshire.

Blenkinsop is already serving four-and-a-half years for other activities.

He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in December, last year, after admitting a break-in at a guinea pig farm in Staffordshire and a further three years for his part in a baseball bat attack on the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, Brian Cass.

The court heard yesterday how activists had blown up a lorry parked at the meat plant using a home-made bomb, constructed from a firework, wood and plastic tape.

The cost of the attack was estimated at £45,000.

Identical devices were found after attacks on five cars belonging to Huntingdon employees living in Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire.

Stephen Kamlish, defending, said his client had now turned his back on violent direct action.

A letter was read in court from Carla Lane which said: "Me and my staff miss David. He was a genuine and caring person and someone you could trust in - something not easy to come by these days."