WE NEED YOU TO DELIVER JUSTICE
DAD REVEALS HOW HE WAS SHUNNED BY LOCALS Accused Post Office worker in court plea
Gordon Blackstock Subpostmasters caught up in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history have urged Scottish courts to act.
It comes af ter 39 people who ran Post Offices had their convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting quashed by the Court of Appeal in England.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is reviewing five convictions north of the border.
But those caught up in the scandal have urged the SCCRC to act quickly and get the cases to court.
Kashif Nadeem, who was only 19 when he found himself accused of losing £ 28,000 in cash meant for the Post Office he ran from a shop in Edinburgh in 2008, 008, said: “This has as been a long g time coming. We need justice and I’d urge the Scot t ish authorities to o act quickly.
“I was accusedsed of stealing £28,000 and had to hand over a cheque to the Post Office during a meeting at their headquarters in 2008.
“I was basically told if I didn’t hand over the money, I’d be going to jail. It was devastating.
“I was young and thought I’d get over it but my dad, who was 50, took it very hard.
“We were shunned in the
c oommu n i t y . WheWhen my dad walwal ked i nto t he mosque, everybody would go quiet. We were ostracised.”
Kashi f , 33, said he lost col leagues as friends after accusing them of being involved in the missing money.
Officials took the Post Office business from him and drafted in another subpostmaster to run it from his shop.
After struggling to make ends meet, he quit the shop to open a restaurant before moving to the Borders to open up a new store.
The dad of two said: “I’m trying to get access to tapes of the interview we had back in 2008.
“I repeatedly said there was something wrong with their computer system and they kept denying it. For years, I thought I was the only one affected.
“I was young and able to get back on my feet. Others weren’t as fortunate. It is important that the Scottish courts act promptly to give us justice.”
The quashing of the English convictions came after the Cr imina l Cas e s Rev iew Commission opened up a probe in 2015 over convictions linked to a dodgy IT system used by the Post Office. Between 2000 and 2014, the Post Office prosecuted 736 subpostmasters and sub-postmistresses across the UK – an average of one a week – based on information from its
Horizon IT system. Some of those prosecuted have since died.
Shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has been supporting Scots affected. The Edinburgh South MP said: “This has been a long-running scandal and many people have had their lives left upside down. We need a full public inquiry to get to the bottom of this.”
The Post Office said any legal rulings in Scotland was a matter for the SCCRC. The SCCRC could not be contacted.