EX-FUJITSU ENGINEER SAYS HE 'GOT THINGS WRONG'
A computer expert whose evidence helped to convict innocent subpostmasters was 'trapped into doing thing I shouldn't have', he told a public inquiry yesterday.
Gareth Jenkins said he had 'got things very wrong' but denied he had deliberately deceived the criminal trials of up to 15 wrongly accused sub-postmasters, or that he was 'uncaring' to their plight.
The former Fujitsu engineer, who helped to design the Horizon software at the centre of the Post Office IT scandal, denied he had hidden problems with the accounting system.
He faced questions from lawyers acting for the falsely accused sub-postmasters, some of whom were convicted and jailed after Post Office prosecutions which relied on his evidence.
Barrister Flora Page, acting for Seema Misra, who was jailed while pregnant with her second child, said he had hidden the truth about Horizon from Mrs Misra's criminal trial when he knew it was an 'out of control monster'.
In a series of questions at the public inquiry, she said: 'Isn't the truth that you knew that Horizon was a monster and that it was causing harm? You hid it didn't you? You didn't tell the jury about the monster... You threw mud in the jury's eyes, didn't you?'
Mr Jenkins responded: 'No, that was not how I felt... No. No I did not.'
Ms Page said his evidence was 'deliberately and knowingly deceptive' and did not include numerous problems with the Horizon accounting system, and likened it to Frankenstein's monster.
She went on: 'You hid all these issues and problems when you gave your evidence against Seema Misra... And you did that even though she was standing right there in the dock in front of you.'
Mr Jenkins, 72, responded: 'No. I don't believe that I deliberately hid anything.' He told the inquiry: 'My feeling was then and is now that the issues to do with this are down to the way that the Post Office has behaved rather than faults in the Horizon system.'
He denied he had tailored his evidence to ensure that his employer at the time, Fujitsu, would receive a 'clean bill of health'.
He added: 'I'm sorry for what happened to Mrs Misra but I feel that was down to the way that Post Office Limited had actually behaved and wasn't purely down to me.
'I clearly got trapped into doing things that I shouldn't have done, but that was not intentional on my part... I appreciate I did get things very wrong but it was done through ignorance rather than maliciousness.'
During four days of evidence at the public inquiry - the longest faced by any witness so far - Mr Jenkins has repeatedly said he believed at the time that Horizon was functioning well.
He has said he did not understand that when he gave written evidence to criminal trials, or when he appeared in person to testify against Mrs Misra, he was under a legal duty to disclose any problems with the computer system to the sub-postmasters and their lawyers.
Now retired, he is facing a Metropolitan Police investigation on suspicion of perjury and perverting the course of justice but has not been charged with any offence.
More than 700 subpostmasters were handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 when errors in the Horizon system meant money appeared to be missing from many branch accounts when, in fact, it was not.
Mrs Misra, who sat beside her barrister during Mr Jenkins' questioning at the public inquiry, was wrongly convicted of stealing £70,000 from her Post Office branch in West Byfleet, Surrey.
She served four-and-a-half months of a 15-month prison sentence while pregnant with her second child. Her 2010 conviction was only overturned in 2021.
The inquiry continues.
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