UK to exonerate, compensate wrongly convicted Post Office staff

Source: The News International

LONDON: The UK government announced Wednesday it will unilaterally quash the wrongful theft convictions of hundreds of self-employed Post Office branch managers targeted due to faulty software, and offer them immediate compensation.

Announcing the highly unusual decision to pass legislation exonerating and compensating the subpostmasters, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he wanted to help right "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's history".

It follows renewed focus on a scandal stretching back two decades, which saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly convicted of theft because of the glitch in Fujitsu's then-new "Horizon" accounting software.