Commander Robert (Bob) Huntley who died on March 5th aged 81, was the first head of the UK anti-terrorist branch and the police officer ultimately responsible for the wrongful imprisonment of Judith Ward and the Guildford Four.
Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist division or the Bomb Squad as it was known then, was formed in 1971 under the control of Bob Huntley - Britain's top "crime buster".
Initially the anti-terrorist branch had a high-profile success in detecting and arresting 10 IRA members who carried out the March 8th, 1973, car bombings in London.
The bombers, including the Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly, the Price sisters, Dolours and Marion, set off four car bombs. Some 223 people were injured and one middle-aged man died of a heart attack.
All 10 IRA members were arrested trying to board flights to Dublin. Eight later received life sentences with the recommendation that they serve 20 years.
However, as the IRA campaign in Britain was renewed and intensified in 1974, the anti-terrorist branch came under considerable political pressure to produce results. The tactics used - in many cases fabricating statement evidence - was to lead to the imprisonment of up to 20 innocent people. Bob Huntley was involved in two of the worst instances: the convictions and imprisonment of the Guildford Four and of Judith Ward in 1975.
In April 1993, Bob Huntley gave evidence in the Old Bailey trial of three of his former officers accused of fabricating statement evidence against one of the Guildford Four, Patrick Armstrong.
Bob Huntley told the court Armstrong freely admitted being an IRA member, confessed to planting the Guildford public-house bomb which killed five people, and that he named the other three members of the Guildford Four. Bob Huntley continued: "He never hesitated and at no time did he make any complaint about any of my officers or any other officers."
Patrick Armstrong, Paul Hill, Carole Richardson and Gerry Conlon were shown later to have been subject to a level of abuse that was tantamount to torture. They were entirely innocent and had no connection with the IRA. The three police officers who produced the statements that imprisoned the four were acquitted.
The bombings were, in fact, the work of the IRA unit that became known as the Balcombe Street Gang after the street in Marylebone, London, where they held a middle-aged couple hostage during a six-day siege in 1976 before surrendering to Bob Huntley's officers.
The Guildford Four, who spent 15 years in prison, were only released in 1989 after civil rights activists and lawyers in Britain took up their case. Bob Huntley never apologised.
Another case in which he was involved was the arrest and interrogation of Judith Ward for the "M62 massacre" in which an IRA bomb exploded on a bus carrying off-duty soldiers, their wives and children on February 4th, 1974. Nine soldiers, two children and one woman were killed.
Ward had come to the attention of Bob Huntley's unit because of her flirtation with republicanism while working in Ireland as a stable hand. She was arrested and another detailed statement was produced in which the police alleged she admitted to the M62 and two other bombings. Her admission contained the apparently damning line about planting the bomb in the coach: "I walked over to the bus station. I was shaking like a leaf. The boot was open."
A simple investigation of her whereabouts at the time would have shown she could not have planted the bomb. At the time she was drinking with a group of people in a pub 100 miles away.
Ward served 18 years in prison before she, too, was freed. The Appeal Court judges castigated the evidence used by police to ensnare an innocent woman. They particularly attacked the forensic evidence of Dr Frank Skuse which had claimed to show Ward had handled explosives.
Robert Huntley was born in Ashington, Northumberland, on August 1st, 1919. Having left Bothell School at 14, he went to work at a local colliery where he rose to become chief clerk at the age of 16.
He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1939 at the age of 20 and was posted to Southwark, then one of the tougher areas of the capital.
The following year he joined the Royal Air Force and was involved in the highly dangerous work of dropping supplies and agents to guerrilla groups in Europe and the Middle East.
He returned to the police service in 1945 and was quickly selected for duty with the Criminal Investigation Division (CID). He was promoted to detective inspector in 1969 and became a CID commander that same year.
Bob Huntley was pre-deceased by his wife Dorothy (nee Kelly), whom he married in 1942. They had one son.
Robert (Bob) Huntley: born 1919; died, March 2001