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Legal history was made in Cardiff Crown Court today. Mark Grommek, 50, became the first person in the world to be held accountable by a jury for his role in causing a miscarriage of justice, despite both prosecution and defence lawyers agreeing that he had told the truth for eight months and only made a false statement after being threatened with violence and false imprisonment by police officers investigating the savage murder of twenty-year-old Lynette White. Mr Grommek admitted that he had given perjured evidence against Yusef Abdullahi and Ronnie Actie on three occasions, although he had previously denied the charges, claiming that he acted under duress. The jury heard extracts read out from twenty interviews Mr Grommek had with police between 2002 and 2006.

He made eight statements to police in the three months after the murder, which happened in the early hours of St Valentine's Day 1988. Mr Grommek maintained that he had seen and heard nothing significant. He stuck to that account until November 22nd 1988 when he broke down in the second interview that day, which was recorded by contemporaneous note in the absence of a solicitor. No contact with Mr Grommek had been tape-recorded during that inquiry. The jury heard extracts from taped interviews with Stephen Miller, 42, and Mr Abdullahi. The interviews with Mr Miller had 'horrified' the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1992. The interviews with Mr Abdullahi were equally shocking. The court heard Detective Inspector Graham Mouncher describe Mr Abdullahi as “a vicious, evil, wicked man...” Mr Abdullahi had been working on the MV Coral Sea in Barry Dock – nearly ten miles away – throughout the night of the murder. The court heard him refer to it directly or indirectly over a hundred times.