Post Office suspected of more injustices over Horizon pilot scheme

Sub-postmasters celebrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, in 2021, after their convictions were overturned. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

The Post Office is suspected of wrongly prosecuting dozens more operators who took part in a pilot scheme of the faulty Horizon system, the Guardian has been told.

Amid growing anger over the treatment of postmasters whose lives have been ruined in the scandal, Whitehall sources have confirmed that a precursor scheme was rolled out in 1995 and 1996 to hundreds of branches in north-east England.