Post Office Horizon: Postmistress wants conviction overturned

A former sub-postmistress wants her conviction for false accounting overturned following a long-running dispute over failure in the Post Office's IT systems.

A group of postmasters said faults in the Horizon system led to them wrongly being accused of fraud or theft.

Rubbina Shaheen, who ran the Greenfields post office in Shrewsbury, was jailed for 12 months in 2010.

She believes her conviction was due to irregularities with the IT system.

On Wednesday the Post Office said it accepted it had "got things wrong in our dealings with a number of postmasters" and is to pay almost £58m to settle the dispute.

A group of 550 claimants had joined a civil action to win compensation last year, alleging the Horizon IT system - which was installed between 1999 and 2000 - contained a large number of defects.

Mrs Shaheen, 54, and husband Mohamed Hami, 65, said they lost their Post Office and home because of her conviction.

Although not among the 550, they hope the settlement will lead to it being overturned through the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

Mrs Shaheen said: "When they said I was going to prison, I was totally devastated.

"I hope that we get justice for it and an apology from the Post Office for what we went though."

A spokesman for the CCRC said it has 34 Horizon cases under way, including Mrs Shaheen's, and will be considering the impact of the settlement on them.

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