Convictions posthumously quashed for two rail workers framed by corrupt police officer Derek Ridgewell

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Two males have had their names posthumously cleared after they had been “fitted up” on the phrase of one in every of Britain’s most corrupt police officers.

British Rail workers Basil Peterkin and Saliah Mehmet died with wrongful convictions after racist British Transport Police officer Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell accused them of theft from a web site he later admitted stealing from.

Their convictions, which date to the Seventies, had been right this moment overturned after the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred them to the Court of Appeal.

Ridgewell was concerned in numerous high-profile and controversial instances within the early Seventies and the CCRC says it has now referred 11 instances which relied on his proof. He died of a coronary heart assault in jail in 1982 on the age of 37.

The courtroom heard that the following conviction of DS Ridgewell in 1980 represented contemporary proof which made the convictions unsafe.

Overturning their convictions to a courtroom full of Mr Peterkin and Mr Mehment’s household and buddies, Lord Justice Holroyd mentioned: “A most important matter was not put before the jury which was not then known was that the principal prosecution witnesses were themselves engaged in the very same criminal activity as that which they alleged against Mr Peterkin and the co-accused.

“If the jury had been aware of that fact it would have been very telling.”

He added: “It is very unfortunate that so many years have passed before the injustice which the appellants and their families have suffered can be rectified and that the appellants have not lived to learn of their vindication.”

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