Cleared too late: tragic pair fitted up by Britain’s most bent cop 46yrs ago
TWO rail workers fitted up by Britain’s most corrupt police officer over a robbery 46 years ago were finally cleared yesterday.
The families of Basil Peterkin and Saliah Mehmet wept as the Court of Appeal quashed their convictions.
They were jailed for nine months in 1977 for a £30,000 rail depot robbery on the evidence of British Transport Police Det Sgt Derek Ridgewell. The bent officer’s lies put at least 11 innocent men behind bars, the Criminal Case Review Commission said.
Saliah and Basil went to their graves as guilty men but their families said: “Finally we have justice.”
Their solicitor Matt Foot added: “There is no excuse for the hideous delay of nearly 50 years that it has taken for the justice system to exonerate Saliah Mehmet and Basil Peterkin.” Lord Justice Holroyde told the court he “regretted” the convictions had not been reviewed earlier, but said: “We cannot turn back the clock, but we can quash them.”
Basil’s daughter Janice Peterkin called for a law reform so convictions based on the evidence of criminal officers would be reviewed.
She said: “Basil was unfairly targeted and framed by Ridgwell who was clearly racist and corrupt.”
Saliah’s son Ragu Saliah added: “The injustice he suffered he never managed to comprehend but even harder for him was knowing that his incarceration left my mother and I penniless and homeless.”
Basil and Saliah were set up over the robbery at the Bricklayers Arms Goods Depot in Southwark, South London. Ridgewell led the probe.
He later admitted stealing from the same building for gangsters and was jailed for seven years in 1980. The proceeds of his crimes are believed to be around £4million in today’s money.
Henry Blaxland KC, who represented Basil and Saliah’s families, blasted the BTP for failing to sack Ridgwell in 1973 when a series of prosecutions were dismissed over claims of “police violence” and corruption. During one hearing magistrates were so disturbed by claims against the crooked officer they wanted a probe into him. Mr Blaxland said: “Instead he was transferred to a different section.”
The barrister also criticised BTP’s failure to review all the convictions based on Ridgewell’s evidence.
That left him free to “effectively fit up” Basil and Saliah.
Mr Blaxland told the court Basil moved to the US after he was freed and developed a “profound mistrust of the police”. He died aged 51 in August 1991.
Saliah became a cab driver. He harboured the same mistrust and once even refused to report a robbery on him to police because of it. He passed away aged 75 in August 2021.
Ridgewell died in his prison cell of a heart attack in 1982.