Prison officer ‘given money, gifts and promises by defendant to lie for murder trial inmate’

Friday, January 19, 2024 – A court has heard how a prison officer derailed a murder trial after being lavished with gifts by a defendant.

Former Belmarsh guard, Wiktoria Bujko, 30, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice for reporting a false confession by a man awaiting trial for the murder of Iron Miah.

Mr Miah, 40, was shot in the head on November 19, 2019, in east London, and died in hospital two days later.

The 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 ahead of trial.

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.

The court was told that someone paid £500 into Bukjo’s bank account the day after she submitted her witness statement, however.

Bujko’s statement suggested that Campbell and Afflick-McLeod had planned to rob Ali of drugs, but had encountered Mr Miah when Ali sent him to a meeting in his place.

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.

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, and all defendants will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on February 28.