The Manchester Evening News went to press with a special edition to report the conviction of terrorist Kamel Bourgass on Wednesday - to bring to fruition more than a year of editorial planning.

Reporting restrictions made under the Contempt of Court Act had meant that the paper, and all other media, had not been able to publish anything about his trial for the murder of Detective Constable Stephen Oake last year or his subsequent poisons and explosives conspiracy trial.

A court order was finally lifted at 4.03pm on Wednesday, allowing the MEN to tell its readers that the city policeman who had been killed was helping to prevent a terrorist attack on Britain.

For more than a year the paper followed the case without being able to print a single word.

To ensure a fair trial, the jury in the subsequent ricin case, which finished last week, were not told that Bourgass had already been jailed for life for murder, and the media could not report on either trial until proceedings had come to an end.

MEN London editor Ian Wylie spent more than a year covering the case, from Bourgass's first appearance at Bow Street Magistrates sitting at Belmarsh to pre-trial hearings, the three-month Stephen Oake Old Bailey murder trial and the second, seven month, poisons and explosives conspiracy trial.

His work and that of other MEN staff meant that the paper was able to bring readers three pages of breaking news on Wednesday evening, followed up by 11 pages of in-depth coverage and background on Thursday and four pages on Friday.

During each case Ian wrote thousands of words, typing up transcripts of what was said in court every night.

Ian said: "From the first trial alone there was something like 70,000 words. Knowing we could not report anything until the very end, it wasn't simply a case of writing copy as the evidence unfolded in court.

"We knew it would all have to be pulled together after the end of each respective trial in order to give our readers the full picture.

"The thought of going back over shorthand in dozens of notebooks didn't bear thinking about. So typed transcripts were the only way to keep the material manageable."

Reporting was made even more difficult when Special Branch officers were called to give evidence and the media had to sit behind a screen, to protect the identity of the officers.

Near the conclusion of the second trial Ian sent a note to the trial judge to ask him to bear in mind that the media had adhered to the rules, and to ask him to lift the reporting restrictions at the earliest opportunity, which the judge subsequently did.