A PILOT who spent five months in a Central African Republic jail on a mass murder charge has returned to the country to set up a string of businesses and a charity.

David Simpson celebrated his 25th birthday with his family at their pheasant farm in Gillamoor, on the North York Moors, before flying back to the war-torn country, less than two months after being cleared of killing 13 illegal gold miners.

Mr Simpson said he was excited about his return to the capital Bangui, where he was held from April to August in squalid jail cell with more than a dozen others and attacked during a prison riot, as he would be devoting his energies to developing a range of enterprises.

The former pupil of Lady Lumley’s School, in Pickering, who is the general manager of big game hunting firm Cawa Safari, said he planned to set up taxi leasing, garage services and air conditioning firms as well as create a charitable wildlife haven on his firm’s 20,000 sq km concession.

He said while he appreciated the torment his family had suffered while he was in jail he would also return to help run trips on the reserve where he found the miners’ bodies, who human rights groups believe were killed by terrorists the Lord’s Resistance Army.

He said: “I know it sounds crazy and I can’t really explain it. I can’t see myself doing anything else.

“Everyone said ‘you are off your rocker lad’, but I love what I do and I love the place and it is hard to give it up.”

Mr Simpson said the people who alleged he had been responsible for the killings, including the country’s justice minister, had since been arrested over corruption.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office, which, said it had reissued a warning against all travel to the area around Cawa Safari’s hunting reserve “due to the continuing threat from armed groups”.

His father, Peter, said he was very concerned his son would continue to work in an area plagued by terror attacks and that he and his wife, Vicky, would visit him in February.

He said: “We were in two minds about it, but during the five weeks he was at home his mind was in Africa and just spent his time planning what he would do next year.”