THE RELEASE today of three of the men convicted of murdering newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater is justice at last.

But it is another disgrace for British justice.

For it has taken 18 years for the courts to accept the truth.

Why so long?

In that time the lives of the three have been ruined.

We are told that their freedom comes on the strength of new evidence - of police duplicity in extracting a vital confession that put them behind bars all this time.

But what condemned these innocent men to this fate was not simply the deceit of bent officers in the now-notorious West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad. They were up against a system - highlighted already by other notable miscarriages of justice - that sustains the reluctance of the police, the courts, the legal establishment and authority generally to admit any fallibility.

It has taken three visits to the Appeal Court, seven police investigations and a sustained public campaign for the three to be released at the end of 18 long years.

As such, this victory for truth and justice is a bitter one.

But in view of it and the other scandals for British justice in recent years, there must be efforts made to smash that system.

There must be a full and open inquiry into every aspect of this case, not only to discover how and by whom mistakes were made, but also to prevent more innocent people wrongly suffering for years on end as have these three and others.

And it must amount to more than just pious pontification from the Home Secretary as witnessed on Question Time last night.

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