Up to 500 former post office staff could have been wrongly convicted
As many as 500 more former post office workers could have been wrongly convicted of theft or false accounting as a result of a computer glitch, it has been revealed.
Last month the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the cases of 39 ex post office staff to the Court of Appeal after a court ruled that a computer error could have been to blame.
They included former Shrewsbury sub-postmistress Rubbina Shaheen, jailed for 12 months in 2010 for false accounting, and ex counter clerk Tracy Felstead, from Telford, who was jailed for six months in 2001 for theft.
Carl Page, who kept a post office in Rugeley, and Neelam Hussain, a former sub-postmistress in West Bromwich, have also been granted appeals against their theft convictions.
A further 22 cases are still to be considered by the commission.
The Post Office has now asked top law firm Peters & Peters to investigate a further 500 cases where there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
The Post Office said it was leaving 'no stone unturned' in its review of the 500 new cases, adding: "We are doing everything we can to assist the criminal justice process."
'Scandal'
The turning point came last year, when the Post Office agreed to pay 550 former post office workers, including Miss Felstead, an out-of-court settlement of £57.75 million.
The payout brought to an end a group action in the High Court, which resulted in Mr Justice Fraser ruling that the financial discrepancies the staff had been blamed for could have been caused by a fault with the Post Office's computer system.
But it has since emerged that most of the payout could go on legal costs, and it is still unclear how much the claimants will receive.
Judge Fraser likened the Post Office's conduct in the affair to that of a 'mid-Victorian factory owner'. He also wrote to the director of public prosecutions, inviting him to consider action against officials from computer giant Fujitsu, who had given evidence in previous court cases. Fujitsu is the company behind the Post Office's controversial Horizon database, which is said to have created accounting shortfalls.
Mrs Shaheen, now 54, was sub-postmistress at Greenfields Post Office in Shrewsbury before her conviction. She had initially been charged with theft after the Horizon database showed a shortfall of £43,500. The theft charge was dropped on condition that she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge.
Miss Felstead, 37, of Bournside Close, Brookside, Telford, was a 19-year-old counter clerk when she was jailed in 2001. She had denied stealing £11,500.
Telford MP Lucy Allan described Miss Felstead's imprisonment as a 'grotesque miscarriage of justice', and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described the affair as a scandal.
