Post Office scandal: 'Hugely significant' evidence unearthed in computer expert's garage

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. Read more: Compensation scheme for Capture scandal victims announced The "long lost" 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. 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 judge introducing everybody very properly…but the barrister in question for the defence, he went along and said 'I am not going to need you so you don't need to be here any more'.

"I wasn't asked back." Sky News has reached out to the barrister in Pat Owen's case who said he had no recollection of it. 'An accident waiting to happen' The report, commissioned by the defence and written by Adrian Montagu and his colleague, describes Capture as "an accident waiting to happen.