Paddy Hill claims Police 'know who bombed Birmingham'

It is more than 25 years since I first met Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six.

Back then he was locked up in Gartree Prison in Leicestershire - and strongly protesting his innocence.

He was angry that he - and five other men - had been wrongly convicted of the murders of 21 people in the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974.

My first meeting with him in the visitors room in the prison was intense as he spoke of his feelings of injustice over what had happened to him.

Looking back now, he describes the high security prisons he was kept in as "like battle zones".

In 1991 the Birmingham Six had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal. Paddy Hill's pent up feelings burst out as he verbally attacked the judicial system outside the Old Bailey in front of huge, cheering crowds.

I interviewed him a number of times after that, and recently spoke to him again at his home in rural Scotland.

That anger has not gone away, and he told me:

The anger is there, he says, partly because 23 years since his release, "the truth" about what happened in 1974 has still not come out.

He's angry too because he says he and other victims of miscarriages of justice have had little or no help deal with the deep-seated psychological problems they developed while in jail accused of horrendous crimes they did not commit.

He says:

This year is the 40th anniversary of the pub bombings - and soon West Midlands Police are expected to tell the families of the bombing victims what they are (or maybe not) planning to do next in terms of re-opening or re-investigating the case. They are currently looking, for instance, at whether 40 years on, there is any hope of new forensic techniques being applied.

Like Paddy Hill, the "Justice for the 21" campaign - set up by relatives of the bombing victims - are looking for answers, and finally want the case to be resolved.

Paddy Hill has little faith that there will be any revelations in the coming weeks. I ask him what he expects to see:

And when asked if he thought it was time Police looked into the case further, he went on to say:

Paddy Hill, however, says an official apology to the Birmingham Six would be "useless" and "meaningless".

He tells me: