Joy and anger for Shropshire pair cleared after being jailed in Post Office scandal
Two former Post Office workers from Shropshire who were wrongly jailed because of a glitch in a computer system have spoken of their joy and anger, after their convictions were quashed.
Tracy Felstead, 38 from Brookside, Telford, and Rubbina Shaheen, 55, from Shrewsbury, were among dozens to have their names cleared by the Court of Appeal after it ruled that the Post Office's defective Horizon computer system made their prosecutions "an affront to the public conscience".
Ms Felstead said she had broken down and cried as she heard her name among the 39 cleared by the court.
She was an 18-year-old counter assistant when she was accused of stealing £11,500 from the post office where she worked in London. She denied the charge, but was convicted in 2001 and jailed for six months.
Mrs Shaheen, 55, who kept Greenfields Post Office in Shrewsbury, was jailed for 12 months in 2010 for false accounting.
She had originally been charged with the theft of £40,000, but the Post Office agreed to drop the more serious charge on the condition she pleaded guilty to false accounting.
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After years of battles both have now had their names cleared, with serious questions being raised over the Post Office's decision to pursue their prosecution.
Announcing the court's ruling, Lord Justice Holroyde said the Post Office "knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon" and had a "clear duty to investigate" the system's defects.
He added: "Post Office Limited's failures of investigation and disclosure were so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the 'Horizon cases' an affront to the conscience of the court."
Ms Felstead said the conviction had cast a shadow over her life, and that while she is pleased to finally be cleared, there must now be answers – and people held accountable – over what happened.
She said: "I am over the moon that my conviction has been quashed, but obviously I am angry that this has ever happened in the first place, and sad for the people who are not here to see it.
"It has ruined my whole adult life. I have had it since I was 19. For my whole adult life I have not known anything different. I have had a criminal conviction and you just learn to live with it. No one believes you at the time and there is nothing you can do."
She added: "Hopefully now something will be done to find out who knew what and when. Somebody knew and somebody had authority, I believe more than one person knew but we will see what happens now."
Mrs Shaheen said: "I'm over the moon, the pressure has been lifted off me now. We can now move on with our lives."
But she said nothing would compensate for the decade she had lost, or the impact the ordeal had taken on her health.
She said: "It's the stress of this that caused my serious illness, I've got kidney failure and I have to go for dialysis, the Post Office can't ever give me a new life free from that."
She said she would be speaking to her legal team and seeking compensation.
Her husband Mohamed, who also lost his business running a convenience store from the post office, said the years lost meant it would now be too late for them to start another business.
"We have lost 11 years of our life," she said. "We have both got older, I don't think we will be starting another business now.
"The main thing is to focus on our health."
He called for a change in the law, so that in future allegations of theft from the Post Office were investigated by the police and presented to the Crown Prosecution Service, rather than allowing the Post Office itself to investigate and act as a prosecuting authority.
He said: "That is the first thing they should do, they should change that law. At the moment the Post Office is the judge, jury and executioner."
