Two men have had their names posthumously cleared after they were “fitted up” on the word of one 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 site he later admitted stealing from.
Their convictions, which date to the 1970s, were today overturned after the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred them to the Court of Appeal.
Ridgewell was involved in a number of high-profile and controversial cases in the early 1970s and the CCRC says it has now referred 11 cases which relied on his evidence. He died of a heart attack in prison in 1982 at the age of 37.
The court heard that the subsequent conviction of DS Ridgewell in 1980 represented fresh evidence which made the convictions unsafe.
Overturning their convictions to a courtroom filled with Mr Peterkin and Mr Mehment’s family and friends, Lord Justice Holroyd said: “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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