THE Westmorland Gazette is urging readers to back its plea for a South Lakeland businessman to be freed from a Turkish jail, reports Michaela Robinson-Tate. Post your comments using the form at the end of the story.Launched this week, the Bail Not Jail campaign aims to put pressure on the Turkish authorities to release Paul Cleasby from prison while he awaits his trial for smuggling antiquities.Bail Not Jail is backed by Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Collins, and Paul Cleasby's mother Wendy Shepherd, who this week spoke of her fears for her son.Any readers who believe that Mr Cleasby should be freed pending his trial next month are asked to sign the form printed below.The Gazette will send the forms to Westminster, and Mr Collins will then personally deliver them to the Turkish Ambassador to the UK, His Excellency Akin Alptuna, in London next week.Mr Collins urged readers to act straightaway, if they wished to support Mr Cleasby, and alert the Turkish government to the strength of feeling for the 43-year-old. "They need to know that this is not just an individual," he said. "Paul has now become someone in whom the whole of South Lakeland has taken an interest, is someone who has got friends and family, business colleagues and employees in the area who want to see he is treated properly."They don't understand why, for the sort of charge he is facing, he has now spent several weeks behind bars. It's important as many Westmorland Gazette readers as possible should register their concern, both because the family will greatly appreciate it and because the more people that do, the greater influence we can wield."Although he could not pre-judge the judicial process, Mr Collins said that as Turkey wanted to join the EU, he hoped it would regard an EU citizen with "respect and tolerance, erring on the side of generosity".Mr Cleasby was arrested last month at Antalya airport, on his way home to Windermere following a holiday. His family understood he had bought a rock as a garden ornament, and was detained as he attempted to bring it home.The Turkish authorities said that the rock was, in fact, a piece of marble, and exporting it would be in contravention of the Protection of Cultural Property Act.For the last four weeks Mr Cleasby, who owns the horn product manufacturing business Abbey Horn, based at Holme near Milnthorpe, has been held in cell D17 of Kapali Cezaevi Murdurlugu prison, and has been refused bail. His mother, Wendy Shepherd, 66, of Crosthwaite, said she had been trying to stay active to stop herself worrying constantly about her son, and although she was not prone to crying she had shed quite a few tears. She is very worried about the conditions Mr Cleasby is being held in, including the lack of hot water."It worries me he isn't getting any exercise, and it worries me about the health side of it. It's just not like Paul to ever have got in any trouble of any kind."Mrs Shepherd said she and her husband, Ernie, Paul's father Derek Cleasby, and his brother and sisters Craig, Tracy and Vanda, were all worried about him. They were also concerned at the lack of information, and the difficulty of contacting him except through a laborious process of sending faxes."He will be putting a brave face on it, trying to laugh through it as much as he can. He will make a big joke of it when he comes home but I am sure he will be hurting," she added.Mrs Shepherd, who said she feared that the trial date of November 8 would be delayed, asked readers to support the campaign, particularly if they felt it would help someone in a similar position in the future.In a response to a written Parliamentary question set down by Mr Collins, Foreign Office Minister of State Baroness Symons said that she understood the family's concerns about Mr Cleasby's detention.Pick up your copy of the Gazette for a petition form to sign and submit to us.