Archives :
Police investigation
-
Closing statements: Day 2 – Circular Firing Squad
There were some good points made today, but the main one was a big shrug – “not me, mate”. In this blog post I’m going to focus on what was said by the various core participants’ barristers. For more on what it was like to be there and why there’s a basket full of chocolate…
-
Closing statements: Day 1
The hearing room was packed today as Subpostmasters, their supporters, lawyers, journalists and members of the public attended a long day of submissions at Aldwych House in London. First out of the blocks was Ed Henry KC who sought to draw the line of conspiracy upwards through the executive to the Post Office board. Henry…
-
Police interview third suspect in Post Office scandal investigation
Four-and-a-half years after their investigation into the Post Office scandal began, the Metropolitan Police have finally interviewed a third suspect under caution. The two other individuals were interviewed in October 2021 and again in September 2022. They are believed to be former Fujitsu engineers Gareth Jenkins and Anne Chambers. The third individual has not been…
-
Gareth Jenkins: the misplaced confidence of an unreliable god
We know that Gareth Jenkins, Fujtisu’s “unreliable god” (in the words of Anthony de Garr Robinson) does not have a PhD – despite being erroneously described as Dr Jenkins in the first Clarke Advice and a number of Post Office documents. He does, however, have a maths degree from Cambridge. We found out today he…
-
Graham Ward: a man in trouble
Graham Ward was the Post Office investigator who helped put former Subpostmaster Noel Thomas away. Whether he did so by perverting the course of justice is something the Metropolitan Police (his current employer) will be looking at very closely, after today’s evidence session. The Metropolitan Police are core participants to the Inquiry. Mr Ward was…
-
The Post Office’s “caring” side
The other story to come out of today’s evidence (21 May 2024) took us away from inability of Alwen Lyons to see herself as anything other than a helpful facilitator of Post Office business and Second Sight’s investigation into the Post Office business. It concerns a couple of emails sent by Post Office Head of…
-
Criminal conspiracy: slowly joining the dots
A throwaway line in a piece of oral evidence at the Horizon IT inquiry yesterday may have revealed more about the cover-up which some are now openly calling a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice at the Post Office. The evidence came from Dave Pardoe, a former Senior Security Manager, invested with the…
-
Institutional investigative ignorance
Paul Whitaker, as it says in the screengrab above, used to be a Post Office Investigator (and, almost inevitably, before that, a postman). In his evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry on Thursday, Mr Whitaker was taken to a 2011 email chain regarding his investigation into a Post Office branch in St John…
-
Racist ID codes. When did they leave the Met?
On 2 June 2023 I sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force. I asked: “Could you tell me when the police stopped using the word “negroid” in its racial identification codes? Please can you supply me with documentation supporting this?” To give the Met’s FOI department some context,…
-
Ecce Chambers
I attended the morning session of Anne Chambers’ evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry yesterday. Chambers is a former senior Fujitsu engineer, currently under police investigation. She is of signal importance to this scandal on the basis that she gave evidence in the Post Office’s High Court civil prosecution of Lee Castleton, the…