David Lucas, 45, a businessman, told an undercover reporter that he sold his “mobile execution units” for up to £12,000 each. More than 30 top newspapers, including The Guardian, the Daily Mail, and the Sydney Morning Herald followed the story. Commentators condemned his shocking opportunism and Jeremy Vine debated the issue on Radio 2.

BBC and Sky News sent crews to the village of Mildenhall to film him inside his pet-food shop. Amnesty International accused him of making “a mockery of the UK’s efforts to oppose the death penalty around the world”.

Glowering behind his bushy beard, Mr Lucas posed defiantly next to gallows outside his shop, and explained that he had been selling execution equipment for ten years. “It is for law and order, not for bad people to get hold of. You are safer on the streets of Libya and African countries than you are here,” he told reporters.

But now it is the veracity of Mr Lucas that hangs in the balance. His business partner has come forward to claim that the story is an elaborate hoax.

Brian Rutterford, who owns the land where Mr Lucas has his shop, said yesterday that his partner had been fooling everyone. “It is a hoax that has got completely out of hand. I know David well, work closely with him and I know he has built one set of gallows — the one that remains outside his shop on my land. The rest is rubbish,” he said.

“He has no sale receipts for gallows because he hasn’t sold any. He keeps up the pretence because he likes talking to the media about capital punishment,” he added. “David sells pet food from my property and I speak to him twice a week. If he was building gallows for foreign governments, I think I would know about it.”

Foreign governments said to have bought Mr Lucas’s equipment denied last week ever doing so. A spokesman for the Zimbabwe High Commission said: “We have never done any international trade in buying gallows. We do use gallows but have our own.”

The Libyan Embassy also denied any knowledge of Mr Lucas and his trade.

Mr Rutterford, 58, who farms 2,500 acres in Norfolk and Suffolk, said that Mr Lucas built the gallows last year after being inspired by a photograph of a hangman’s noose on the front page of a tabloid newspaper.

“It started out as a bit of fun because David supports capital punishment. It is a hobbyhorse of his,” he said.

The hoax, according to Mr Rutterford, began in response to a sting by an undercover reporter from The People newspaper who posed as a Zimbabwean official.

At the beginning of last month Mr Rutterford received a telephone call while chatting to Mr Lucas inside his shop, he said. It was from someone wanting to know who had built the gallows on his property.

Three days later Mr Rutterford received a call from Mr Lucas, this time telling him that a “coloured chap” from the Zimbabwean Government had visited and wanted to place an order. The next day Mr Rutterford received a call from a People reporter who said that Mr Lucas had tried to sell him a set of gallows.

“I said that I had helped David with the sale because I had allowed him to put it on my land. I see that what I said may have helped to confirm an untrue story,” he said.

Mr Lucas was quoted in The People encouraging the undercover reporter to buy a “multihanging execution system” on a lorry. “You can get rid of five people at a time,” he reportedly said. However, last week Mr Lucas said that he could not prove who bought gallows because he has never kept paperwork. He claimed that he had sold “some” sets of gallows, but declined to say how many or to whom. “I have never personally sold anything to Gaddafi or Mugabe. I wish this had never started,” he added.

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