Prison officer given ‘money, gifts and promises’ to lie for murder case inmate
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A prison officer was given “money, gifts and promises” to lie for a defendant awaiting trial for murder, a court has heard.
Wiktoria Bujko, 30, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice for reporting a “false confession” by one of three men awaiting trial for the murder of Iron Miah, who was shot dead on his doorstep.
Mr Miah, 40, was shot in the head on November 19 2019 in Nelson Street, east London, and died in hospital two days later.
Mohammed Moshaer Ali, 31, of Dagenham, Antonio Afflick-McLeod, 32, of Ilford, and Aaron Campbell, 32, of Fulham, were found guilty of his murder at the conclusion of a third Old Bailey trial on January 9.
Bujko’s guilty plea can now be reported after Judge Nigel Lickley KC lifted a ban ahead of the defendants’ sentencing.
An earlier trial had to be aborted after former prison officer Bujko came forward with a false account to police.
Prosecutor Crispin Aylett KC said Ali had put Bujko up to creating an “entirely false account of a confession by Aaron Campbell”.
Ali had “repeatedly shown himself to be an outrageous liar” and rewarded Bujko with “money, gifts and promises”, Mr Aylett said.
At the time, she was working at high security HMP Belmarsh in south-east London where all three defendants were being held on remand.
On October 17, 2022, shortly before a retrial was due to begin, Bujko made a statement about a conversation she claimed to have overheard the previous weekend in the prison healthcare unit between Campbell and another inmate.
Someone paid £500 into Bukjo’s bank account the day after she submitted her witness statement, the court was told.
Her account suggested that Campbell and Afflick-McLeod had planned to rob Ali of drugs.
They encountered Mr Miah when Ali sent him to a meeting in his place, she claimed.
An examination of CCTV footage of the unit revealed that Campbell was not there when she claimed to have witnessed the exchange.
A jury heard that Bujko had known Ali since he was first remanded to HMP Thameside where she had been working.
Bujko, of Marlborough Road, Woolwich, was arrested in December 2022.
While on bail, she applied to be a probation officer and worked one day as a trainee in February 2023 before her employment was terminated.
Bujko and Ali both pleaded guilty to conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
All defendants will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on February 28.
