In 1990 Hassan Khan's first conviction for armed robbery was quashed because alleged confessions by him could not be considered reliable, according to the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane. West Midlands police had recorded these confessions during a long car journey, and then made an extra and unnecessary journey so as to have a further opportunity to say they had heard yet more admissions. It was one of a large number of fit ups perpetrated by the West Midlands Police, and the exposure of these in a series of successful appeals led to the disbanding of the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad.
DC Lester Oakley from the Tower Bridge Flying Squad in London arrested Khan for a burglary in Croydon and an armed robbery of the West Wickham Lloyds TSB and put on trial in September 2005. He was convicted by a 10-1 majority. The evidence against Khan for the West Wickham robbery relied on DNA traces found on a pair of sunglasses said by the prosecution to have been discovered at the scene. DC Oakley was one of the first officers at the scene. Last year DC Oakley was unanimously convicted of six counts of theft involving the disappearance of approximately £5,000 in cash from police evidence stores. He was jailed for three years. During that trial it emerged that he had lied on police exhibit documentation relating to Khan's cases. Khan's lawyers argue that the sunglasses – pivotal in the case against him – had been taken from somewhere else; were never photographed at the scene; were kept in store for two weeks before being tested at a time when Oakley was falsifying exhibits. The Criminal Cases Review Commission is now reviewing this case. Read more in the Sunglasses at centre of armed robbery investigation go missingHassan Khan had hoped sunglasses – linked to detective jailed for stealing evidence – could clear his name, but they have apparently gone missing ... read more in the
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