TYCOON Owen Oyston has launched his fight for freedom - almost 12 months since being jailed. A file of new evidence has been sent by lawyers to London where three judges are expected to consider in the next few weeks whether to grant him leave to appeal against his six-year sentence for the rape and indecent assault of a 16-year-old East Lancashire model girl. The owner of Blackpool Football Club, a chain of glossy magazines and two radio stations, he is now prisoner KE2535 in Wymott Jail, eight miles from the Preston offices, where his wife Vicki runs the Oyston Group and campaigns for her husband's release. Their family home is a castle on the outskirts of Lancaster.

It is believed the application for leave to appeal against sentence and conviction will be made for Oyston by Anthony Scrivener, QC, the former chairman of the Bar Council who defended him in three long rape trials last year. Oyston was acquitted of other offences in each of the other trials.

At his third trial in April last year, he claimed he had been the victim of a long-running plot to destroy him, which was prompted and funded by Tory MP Robert Atkins and former Foreign Office Minister Lord Blaker. The two men refused to reply to an early day motion tabled in the Commons by MPs and Owen Oyston's civil action against them stalled in the courts three weeks after his arrest in February 1995 on multiple rape charges. This week, as Mr Atkins fought for re-election in his South Ribble seat, Preston politicians were tipped off by an Internet surfer who reported finding an amazing computer web-site run by a group calling itself The Friends of Owen Oyston.

The web-site carries transcripts of tape-recordings of Lord Blaker and millionaire Blackpool developer Bill Harrison discussing Oyston's affairs with the former Preston fish and chip shop owner and political agitator Michael Murrin.

The web-site carries the text of the controversial Oyston File, a glossy 78-page publication handed out last year to reporters at Liverpool Crown Court as they waited for the jury to return in Oyston's third trial.

These tapes were handed over to Oyston by Murrin to support legal action against Lord Blaker, Atkins and Bill Harrison. On one tape, Lord Blaker is recorded as saying he wanted Oyston "behind bars".

After Oyston was sent to prison, Lord Blaker's solicitors issued a statement on his behalf in which he denied Oyston's allegations and said he would have been prepared to give evidence in the trial of Oyston, if asked.

Oyston has told prison visitors that he intends to take his case against the three men to the European Court of Human Rights.

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