Iraq war hero loses appeal over Orkney waiter killing

Shamsuddin Mahmood, 26, was shot in front of diners while working in an Orkney restaurant in June 1994.

Former soldier Michael Ross, 33, was jailed for life and ordered to spend at least 25 years behind bars after being convicted of the killing in 2008.

The crime was branded “vicious, evil and unprovoked” by the judge who heard the trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

Ross, who was just 15 at the time of the murder, had his appeal against the conviction heard at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh earlier this year.

His legal team argued that police interviews, carried out without a lawyer present when Ross was 15 and 16, were “unfair”. It was claimed that the Crown’s actions, in relying upon the contents of the interviews, were incompatible with his human rights.

The convicted killer’s legal team further argued that the trial judge “erred” by refusing to allow the defence to lead evidence from a psychologist.

But Scotland’s top judge, the Lord Justice General Lord Hamilton, who heard the case with Lords Carloway and Bonomy, upheld the conviction yesterday. Lord Hamilton, who is also issuing a written judgment in the case, told Ross: “For the reasons that are expressed in it, the appeal is refused.”

The murder, in which a masked gunman burst into the Mumutaz restaurant on 2 June 1994 and killed the waiter, was the first on Orkney for 25 years.

The case against Ross, a former Black Watch soldier decorated for outstanding service in Iraq in 2005, was brought to court after police carried out a cold-case review in 2007. The jury found him guilty of murder by majority verdict after a six-week trial. He was also convicted of attempting to defeat the ends of justice.