A convicted murderer’s family are set to use fresh evidence uncovered by a regional journalist in a bid to overturn his conviction.

The family of Jason Moore are set to take the action after Charles Thomson, who works for Newsquest’s investigations unit, revealed that star prosecution witness in Moore’s trial was “drunk” when he came across the incident.

Charles has been investigating the case since late 2021 and recently tracked down Abdul Ahmed, who picked Moore out of a photo ID parade and said he had stabbed Robert Darby outside an East London pub in 2005.

Moore is now nine years into a life sentence for Mr Darby’s murder after he was arrested and charged with the crime in 2012 following Mr Ahmed’a positive identification of him.

The campaign to free Moore is backed by two former Metropolitan Police detectives as well as an unusual ally in Tim Darby, the older brother of the victim.

Charles, pictured, has published a series of stories for the Romford Recorder re-examining the case, which will also form the next series of crime podcast Unfinished, previously produced by Archant.

He has already revealed police had shown Mr Ahmed a photograph of Moore before the ID parade in which he identified him as that knifeman, and that he had previously picked a different member of a police line-up during an initial parade in 2005.

After Charles put the discrepancies to Mr Ahmed, he said: “It was the blink of the eye. I was passing by. How could you remember things like that? And I was drunk.”

He added that he had told the police he was drinking that morning – something never mentioned in court or in any evidence disclosed to the defence.

Newsquest has handed its recording of Mr Ahmed’s comments to Jason’s pro bono lawyer Mark Bowen and also offered it to the Met Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Charles told HTFP: “I hadn’t been on the phone to Mr Ahmed for very long, and had only very gently questioned him about some discrepancies in his account, when he seemed to become irritated and made the sudden exclamation that he couldn’t be expected to remember and he had been drunk.

“I had already been working on this investigation for almost a year. I had studied his police interviews, witness statements, trial testimony, and even the statements of officers who dealt with him on the day Robert was stabbed. I had never seen any mention of Mr Ahmed having been drinking.

“I asked him if he’d told this to the police and he said he had. I’m not sure where this leaves the authorities. Thus far, they have neither admitted nor denied his claims in our interview.

“It seems to me like a catch-22. To accept his claims would undermine his evidence and also suggest a significant disclosure breach has occurred. To refute them would be to suggest that their own star witness is dishonest.

“This is a fascinating case. We have another article coming next week with more revelations and a podcast due out later this year.”