Hundreds of UK postal workers wrongly accused of fraud will have their convictions overturned

abcnews.go.com:

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says he will introduce measures to overturn the convictions of more than 900 post office branch managers who were wrongly accused of theft or fraud because of a faulty computer system

LONDON — Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday he will introduce measures to overturn the convictions of more than 900 post office branch managers who were wrongly accused of theft or fraud because of a faulty computer system.

Sunak said the scandal, which saw hundreds of postmasters falsely convicted of stealing money because Post Office computers wrongly showed that funds were missing from their shops, was “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history."

Of the more than 900 postal branch managers who were convicted of theft or fraud between 1999 and 2015, just 95 have managed to overturn their convictions, Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said.

Some were sent to prison, and many were financially ruined after being forced to pay large sums to the state-owned Post Office. Several killed themselves. In total, over 2,000 people were affected by the scandal.

The real culprit was a defective accounting software package called Horizon, supplied by the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu, which was rolled out across Post Office branches starting in the late 1990s.

Sunak told lawmakers that a new law will be introduced to ensure that those wrongly convicted are “swiftly exonerated and compensated.”

“People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own," he said. “We will make sure that the truth comes to light, we right the wrongs of the past and the victims get the justice they