A damning report into the faulty Post Office IT system that preceded Horizon has been unearthed after nearly 30 years – and it could help overturn criminal convictions.
The document, known about by the Post Office in 1998, is described as “hugely significant” and a “fundamental piece of evidence” and was found in a garage by a retired computer expert.
Capture was a piece of accounting software, likely to have caused errors, used in more than 2,000 branches between 1992 and 1999.
It came before the infamous faulty Horizon software scandal, which saw hundreds of sub postmasters wrongfully convicted between 1999 and 2015.
The ‘lost long’ Capture documents were discovered in a garage by a retired computer expert who came forward after a Sky News report into the case of Patricia Owen, a convicted sub postmistress who used the software.
Adrian Montagu was supposed to be a key witness for Pat’s defence at her trial in 1998 but her family always believed he had never turned up, despite his computer “just sitting there” in court.
Mr Montagu, however, insists he did attend.
He describes being in the courtroom and adds that “at some point into the trial” he was stood down by the barrister for Mrs Owen with “no reason” given.
Adrian Montagu was supposed to be a key witness for Pat’s defence
Sky News has seen contemporaneous notes proving Mr Montagu did go to Canterbury Crown Court for the first one or two days of the trial in June 1998.
“I went to the court and I set up a computer with a big old screen,” he says.
“I remember being there, I remember the…
