John Twomey: 'It's quite personal between me and the police'

After suffering three heart attacks, John Twomey is a man who knows he is living on borrowed time. With his conviction today by a judge sitting without a jury he believes he will now die in prison. Twomey, who has been named by the crown as the mastermind of the Heathrow heist in 2004, has never been shown the evidence that he attempted to tamper with at least one jury that had attempted to try him and co-defendants for a £1.75m armed robbery. He denies any jury tampering and believes he has been targeted by the police because of his history as a thorn in their side. A convicted armed robber, he gave evidence against the police in one of the biggest anti-corruption inquiries into the Metropolitan police – Operation Countryman – and received substantial damages from Scotland Yard. In an interview with the Guardian before his conviction, Twomey said he felt he had been denied justice. "I'm in this situation because the police know they lost this case before. In front of a judge alone I knew I would be convicted, I have no shadow of a doubt." Twomey's relationship with the police and criminal justice system began in his teens. Born in Cork, Ireland, he moved to England after his mother died when he was five, and went to school in Paddington, west London. By his teens he was getting into trouble with the police for petty theft and went on to spend some time in Borstal prison, where he learned to be a bricklayer. In 1971 he moved into more serious offending when he and six others used a replica gun to hold up a Westminster city council building and steal £27,000. Talking about his first armed robbery, he said: "We got £2,000 each out of it. I pleaded guilty and got five years." Until now this was his only conviction for armed robbery. From that moment on Twomey says he and the Metropolitan police Flying Squad began a close and troubled relationship which eventually put him at the heart of the biggest corruption inquiry in the history of the Met, one which he believes still resonates today with serving officers. In 1977, when the Flying Squad was dogged by accusations of corruption, Twomey was arrested for an armed robbery at the NatWest bank in Bayswater Road, west London. Detectives uncovered what was held up as crucial evidence at his home – a sawn-off shotgun. But he alleged that the firearm belonged to the father of one of the officers involved in the arrest. A year later, Operation Countryman began, sparked by the allegations of evidence planting by Twomey and scores more accusations of corruption – some well-founded, others those of men trying to avoid convictions for their crimes. Twomey was one of the few who gave evidence at a trial of the four allegedly corrupt officers involved in his arrest during the inquiry. The four were acquitted but the charges against Twomey were dropped because of the allegations of corruption surrounding the case. As he left the witness box after giving evidence against the police, however, Twomey was arrested again, for another robbery for which he was eventually acquitted. "It's quite personal between me and the Metropolitan police. I feel they are determined to get me," he claimed. Before his conviction today, Twomey had stood trial three times for the heist, at a cost estimated to be between £20m and £30m. During the first hearing at the Old Bailey in February 2005 he suffered a heart attack in Belmarsh prison, where he was being held on remand, and the jury never reached a decision on the evidence against him. At the second trial two years later three jurors were "compromised" according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Two of the jurors quit earlier in the trial then, after the remaining 10 had indicated to the judge they had a majority guilty verdict on all four defendants, they were sent home over a Bank Holiday weekend before giving their decision. One of the panel was "compromised" over that weekend, leaving nine jurors and making it impossible to come to a majority decision. With that few jurors the law says only a unanimous verdict can be taken. The CPS will not confirm rumours that this jury was also suspected of being approached or tampered with by one or more of the defendants. At Twomey's third trial in December 2008 the judge halted the hearing nearly halfway through after receiving information from the prosecution of alleged jury tampering. Twomey was given bail after serving 15 months on remand for the robbery. As he awaited his fourth and final trial, he questioned the justice of his treatment. "This has gone on for nearly six years, it has blown my family apart," he said. "There are people who were serving eight, 10-year and 12-year sentences with me in Belmarsh who have served their time and are out now and my life, what I have left of it with my ill health, was on hold. Now I believe that I will die in prison."