Post Office used racist slur to explain suspects in infamous Horizon scandal
P
ost Office prosecutors tasked with investigating sub-postmasters within the infamous Horizon scandal used a racial slur to categorise black employees, in accordance with paperwork obtained by campaigners.
Fraud investigators have been requested to group suspects based mostly on racial options and used a racist time period for workers from the colonial period of the 1800s which refers to folks of African descent.
The Post Office Horizon scandal, which has been described as “the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history”, noticed a whole lot of harmless postmasters convicted.
The data got here to gentle by means of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request obtained by Eleanor Shaikh, a supporter of the greater than 700 department managers who have been prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 on theft, fraud and false accounting costs.
The doc, thought to have been printed in 2008, requested investigators if the suspects have been “Negroid Types”.
Other classes on the doc embrace “Chinese/Japanese types” and “Dark Skinned European Types”.
Responding to the FOI, a Post Office spokesperson described it as a “historic document” however mentioned the organisation didn’t tolerate racism “in any shape or form” and condemned the “abhorrent” language.
They added: “We fully support investigations into Post Office’s past wrong doings and believe the Horizon IT Inquiry will help ensure today’s Post Office has the confidence of its Postmasters and the communities it supports.”
The Post Office started putting in Horizon accounting software program within the late Nineties, however faults within the software program led to shortfalls in accounts, which sparked calls for on sub-postmasters to cowl the distinction.
Many have been wrongfully prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting, theft and fraud.
Between 2000 and 2014, greater than 700 sub-postmasters have been prosecuted based mostly on data from the accounting system, which noticed employees wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting.
However, in December 2019, a High Court decide dominated the system contained various “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office department accounts have been actually attributable to it.
Many sub-postmasters have had prison convictions overturned.