Two British Rail workers have had their convictions for theft quashed at the Court of Appeal after they were jailed on the word of a corrupt police officer.

Basil Peterkin and Saliah Mehmet both died with their convictions hanging over them after they were sentenced following evidence from British Transport Police officer Derek Ridgwell.

Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell accused the two men of theft from a site he later admitted stealing from.

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The officer, who also served in the South Rhodesian, now Zimbabwean, police force, was involved in a number of high-profile and controversial cases in the early 1970s.

He died of a heart attack in prison in 1982 at the age of 37.

The rail workers’ convictions were quashed by appeal judges at a hearing in London on Thursday, after the men’s cases were referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) – a body which investigates miscarriages of justice.

Mr Mehmet, who died in 2021, and Mr Peterkin, who died in 1991, were both sentenced to nine months in prison in 1977, over the theft of parcels from the Bricklayers Arms goods depot in south London, where they worked.

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They said the items found in their possession had been planted, and that any admissions said to have been made by them had been fabricated by the police.

In 1980, Ridgewell was jailed for seven years for stealing property worth £364,000 from the same site, while his colleagues Detective Constable Douglas Ellis and Detective Constable Alan Keeling were sentenced to six and two years respectively.

The CCRC previously said it has referred 11 cases which relied on Ridgewell’s evidence.

The body also said it has been investigating the “historical racist and corrupt practices” of Ridgewell, whose corruption has led to the convictions of members of the so-called Oval Four and Stockwell Six being overturned in recent years.

Nine other convictions relating to Ridgewell have previously been quashed.

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