LONDON, Feb 18 (NNN-Xinhua) — British lawmakers called for urgent government action over one of the biggest miscarriages ever recorded in the country’s legal history.
Hundreds of postmasters and postmistresses who ran post offices across the country were wrongly accused of fraud in what has become known as the Horizon IT scandal.
In a hard-hitting interim report, the House of Commons business select committee said the Post Office must take urgent action to speed up the process of fully compensating wrongly convicted sub-postmasters.
Over a 14-year period starting 2000, more than 700 postmasters and postmistresses were prosecuted based on information from a new IT accounting system installed and maintained by Fujitsu.
A group of them won a landmark High Court victory when a judge ruled that the Horizon system contained a number of errors and defects.
Some of those prosecuted served prison sentences, and so far a number have had their criminal convictions overturned. A number died before their names were cleared.
The report also recommended that the government set up an independent body as a first point of contact for those wrongly convicted, especially for 576 convicted sub-postmasters who have not yet come forward.
A statutory public inquiry headed by a retired judge is currently investigating the scandal, with convicted postmasters reliving their harrowing experiences of being wrongly convicted. — NNN-XINHUA
