Post Office scandal: Salford man missed seeing dying father

Mohammed Rasul said it was a "massive relief" to be cleared of his conviction

A postmaster who was one of the victims of the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice has told how his conviction meant he missed saying goodbye to his dying father.

Mohammed Rasul, from Salford, was one of 39 people who were cleared of stealing money from the Post Office.

A total of 736 workers were prosecuted based on information from a flawed computer system.

"I can't put into words what I have gone through," Mr Rasul said.

Mr Rasul had worked for the Post Office for almost 20 years when he was suspended in 2005.

He was prosecuted two years later and given an electronic GPS tag and a curfew.

Mr Rasul said due to the curfew, he missed saying goodbye to his dying father.

"I was told I would get arrested if I left the house at certain hours," he said.

"I was frantically ringing around trying to find someone to help me."

Mr Rasul had worked for the Post Office for almost 20 years when he was wrongly prosecuted

Some postmasters went to prison following convictions for false accounting and theft, while many were financially ruined and have described being shunned by their communities.

"The main problem I had once I was suspended was not being able to look customers in the eye," Mr Rasul said.

"They came in with the view I was a criminal."

• Why were hundreds of sub-postmasters prosecuted?

• Man's life 'destroyed' by Post Office conviction

• 'Post Office took us to hell and back but we won'

Mr Rasul said the conviction had been "hanging" over his head for 15 years.

"Hell has a totally different meaning to it now," he added.

On the ruling, Mr Rasul said it was a "massive weight" off his shoulders but added it would be an "uphill task" to get his life back.

The clearing of the names of 39 people follows the overturning of six other convictions in December, which means more people have been affected than in any other miscarriage of justice in the UK.

What is the Horizon computer scandal?

The Horizon system is designed to record the transactions carried out in a post office branch

The Horizon system, developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was first rolled out in 1999 to some post offices to be used for a variety of tasks including accounting and stocktaking.

But from an early stage, it appeared to have significant bugs which could cause the system to misreport, sometimes involving substantial sums of money.

Horizon-based evidence was used by the Post Office to successfully prosecute 736 people.

But campaigners fought a long and hard series of legal battles for compensation in the civil courts, which have been followed by referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

• Listen to the background of the saga - The Great Post Office Trial on BBC Sounds

• Watch the latest BBC Panorama - Scandal at the Post Office

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