UK Post Office inquiry hears from workers wrongfully accused

By SYLVIA HUI
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — A public inquiry is examining the wrongful convictions of hundreds of British postal workers who were accused of theft, fraud or false accounting because of a faulty computer system. Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 postal workers were wrongfully accused, with some convicted and sent to prison. The mistakes represented one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history. The failures were blamed on a defective computer accounting system called Horizon that was installed in local Post Office branches in 1999 from the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu. The Post Office claimed for years that data from Horizon was reliable.  In April, the Court of Appeal overturned the wrongful convictions of 39 people.