The Post Office Scandal: Here is Part 3 of our special series of interviews with Noel Thomas - a Welsh sub-postmaster who was wrongly imprisoned having been falsely accused of stealing money. After 20 years, he and a group of fellow campaigners won a legal battle, after they proved that the computer system, Horizon, installed by the Post Office, was at fault.

On the morning of October 13 2005, two Post Office managers were conducting an audit at the home of sub-postmaster Noel Thomas in Gaerwen, Anglesey.

They were there for a few hours and he took them cups of tea back and forth, Noel told our sister title, Corgi Cymru.

"I give them a piece of paper with the sum of the loss we were carrying - the £50,000. 'Yes, you’re pretty accurate,' they said to me.

“Well to tell you the truth, it was originally £52,000 but they said they had found £3,000. I don't know how.”

As the morning progressed, one of the Post Office managers decided to call the head office.

" ‘The investigators will most probably come,’ he said. And at about noon, another man and a woman arrived. She was quite a nasty woman to be honest. They wanted to interview me on my own, and I refused.”

Afterwards the woman told Noel that she needed to make more phone calls.

" ‘You can use the phone here if you like', I said but they went outside. Then within about three quarters of an hour, they came back with two policemen.

“When they walked back in through the door, she said to the police officer: 'Cuff him! I want him in Holyhead police station – he’s a thief '.

It happened to be that Noel knew the two policemen, he said.

“ ‘I’m not going to cuff him,’ the policeman said. ‘Noel will find his way for you, what time do you want him in Holyhead? She said ‘as soon as possible’.”

Noel's sister-in-law and daughter went with him to Holyhead police station, where he was questioned for six hours.

The thoughts that were going through his head at the time, he said, were: "What have I done? Where was the money? I didn't have it, did I, and I tried to explain that to them."

A Post Office financial investigator told Noel that he had definitely done something with the money: "She asked if I had a new car and everything. And I said 'no'! You saw my car outside, I said to her, it’s an old second-hand Saab. Then she was talking nonsense and saying that I had given the money to someone else.”

Noel was allowed home but eventually a letter arrived telling him he was being prosecuted for theft.

"In January 2006, I had to go to Llangefni Magistrates' Court and of course everyone there knew me - there was a show, wasn’t there. I was referred to Holyhead Magistrates' Court and then on to Mold Crown Court.”

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But how did the community respond to Noel Thomas' prosecution?

"I was a local man. I was a postman who had delivered letters to most of Ynys Môn - from Benllech to Rhosneigr, Aberffraw, Bodorgan, Llangefni and everywhere. People knew me and then the fingers started to point, didn't they. ‘He had been stealing!’

“And I had to live with that.”

Noel was back and forth between Mold and Caernarfon, depending on where the Crown Court was sitting, until the case itself opened in November 2006.

Between being charged and found guilty, Noel still lived at home and continued to serve as a councillor on Ynys Môn Council.

"I spoke to the Chief Executive of the county council at the time and he said: ‘You haven't been convicted yet so I'm perfectly happy for you to carry on’.”

North Wales Chronicle: Caernarfon Crown Court in 2006. Photo: Eric Jones CC BY-SA 2.0Caernarfon Crown Court in 2006. Photo: Eric Jones CC BY-SA 2.0

On November 6 2006, at Caernarfon Crown Court, the Judge presiding over the case was changed before Noel Thomas' trial started.

"Mr Hughes had been with me – he was a boy from Ynys Môn. His father had been with me on the council for years. But they changed the judge and brought in Mr Winston Roddick.”

Ten minutes before the case began in Caernarfon, Noel's barrister wanted a word with him, he said.

'' ‘Look,’ he said to me, ‘I've spoken to the people from the Post and they’re happy to drop the theft charge in order to go for false accounting instead. And you have to sign a piece of paper saying that this has nothing to do with Horizon’. ”

Noel's daughter, Siân, wanted to know what the implications were of pleading guilty to a charge of false accounting.

“ 'To keep him out of prison,’ said the barrister. So I said 'Okay, anything to keep me out of prison - I'm happy'.”

The Post Office "stood firmly against having a jury" and so there wasn’t one, Noel said.

"So I was convicted and Mr Roddick came back in. He said that he’d received many letters in support of me. ‘Very powerful,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid you’ve fallen from grace’.

“And then he said: ‘Sorry, but I must sentence you to nine months imprisonment'.

“I was waiting for the word ‘suspended’... but it didn't come.”

'Take him down!’ said Mr Roddick.

You can read Part 4 from our series with Noel Thomas in The National in the coming days. 

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