A man wrongly jailed for 17 years for a rape he did not commit has said it is “too little too late” after receiving an apology from the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

Andrew Malkinson was jailed in 2003 but eventually released in December 2020.

His charges were quashed last year after new DNA evidence potentially linked another man to the crime.

The CCRC has now offered Mr Malkinson an unreserved apology after the completion of a report from an independent review by Chris Henley KC into the handling of the case.

But reacting to the apology, Mr Malkinson said the time for CCRC chairman Helen Pitcher OBE to apologise was when he was exonerated last summer.

“The CCRC’s delay in apologising to me added significantly to the mental turmoil I am experiencing as I continue to fight for accountability for what was done to me,” Mr Malkinson said.

“The CCRC’s failings caused me a world of pain. Even the police apologised straight away. It feels like Helen Pitcher is only apologising now because the CCRC has been found out, and the last escape hatch has now closed on them.”

He said his lawyer had written to Ms Pitcher last September requesting an apology, to which she refused.

He added: “It is hard for me to see the sincerity in an apology after all this time – when you are truly sorry for what you have done, you respond immediately and instinctively, it wells up in you.”

Earlier on Thursday, Ms Pitcher released a statement saying: “Mr Henley’s report makes sobering reading, and it is clear from his findings that the commission failed Andrew Malkinson. For this, I am deeply sorry. I have written to Mr Malkinson to offer him my sincere regret and an unreserved apology on behalf of the commission.

Addressing beliefs that she was unwilling to apologise, Ms Pitcher added: “For me, offering a genuine apology required a clear understanding of the circumstances in which the commission failed Mr Malkinson. We now have that.

“Nobody can ever begin to imagine the devastating impact that Mr Malkinson’s wrongful conviction has had on his life, and I can only apologise for the additional harm caused to him by our handling of his case.”

Mr Malkinson had applied for his case to be reviewed by the CCRC in 2009, but at the conclusion of its review in 2012 the commission refused to order further forensic testing or refer the case for appeal, amid concerns over costs.

A second application was rejected in 2020.

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Critical DNA evidence had been available since 2007, but no match was found on the police database at the time.

Since Mr Malkinson had his conviction quashed, dozens of rape and murder convictions from before 2016 are set to undergo fresh DNA testing to identify potential miscarriages of justice.

The CCRC said it has re-examined nearly 5,500 cases that it previously rejected in the light of improvement in DNA analysis techniques.

Its initial trawl last summer found around a quarter of the cases are those where the identity of the offender is challenged.

Focusing on those, it says there are potentially several dozen cases where DNA samples could be retested using the DNA 17 technique, first introduced in 2014.

Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell has been charged by police after he was arrested amid an investigation into the SNP’s funding and finances.

Police said he has been charged in connection with the embezzlement of funds from the party.

The former SNP chief executive, 59, was questioned by detectives after being taken into Police Scotland custody on Thursday at 9.13am.

He remained in police custody until he was charged just after 6.30pm.

Murrell has since been released from custody.

A report will be sent to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in due course.

The police investigation into the party’s funding and finances has been ongoing for years.

It has been dubbed Operation Branchform.

Murrell became chief executive of the SNP in 2001, he stepped down from the role in 2023 having held it for more than 20 years.

He has been married to Ms Sturgeon – who resigned as first minister last February – since 2010.

Dozens of people around the world have been arrested after police disrupted a UK-founded website scamming victims on an industrial scale.

LabHost, a site set up in 2021, tricked as many as 70,000 UK victims, obtaining 480,000 card numbers and 64,000 PINs worldwide, the Metropolitan Police said.

It was created by a criminal network and enabled more than 2,000 users to set up phishing websites designed to steal personal information such as email addresses, passwords and bank details.

Criminal subscribers could log on and choose from existing sites or request bespoke pages replicating those of trusted brands such as banks, healthcare agencies and postal services.

The website even provided a tutorial to cater for wannabe fraudsters with limited IT knowledge, with a robotic voice saying at the end: “Stay safe and good spamming”.

Those subscribing to worldwide membership – meaning they could target victims all around the world – paid between £200 and £300 a month.

Since it began, the site has received just under £1m in payments from criminal users.

But just after it was seized and disrupted, its 800 customers got a message telling them that police knew who they were and what they were doing.

Thirty-seven people were arrested around the world, including some at Manchester and Luton airports, as well as in Essex and London.

Detectives have also contacted up to 25,000 UK-based victims to tell them their data has been compromised.

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Police began investigating LabHost in June 2022 after they were tipped off by the Cyber Defence Alliance – a group of British-based banks and law enforcement agencies which share intelligence.

Dame Lynne Owens, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, said: “Online fraudsters think they can act with impunity. They believe they can hide behind digital identities and platforms such as LabHost and have absolute confidence these sites are impenetrable by policing.

“But this operation and others over the last year show how law enforcement worldwide can, and will, come together with one another and private sector partners to dismantle international fraud networks at source.”

Adrian Searle, director of the National Economic Crime Centre in the NCA, said: “This operation again demonstrates that UK law enforcement has the capability and intent to identify, disrupt and completely compromise criminal services that are targeting the UK on an industrial scale.”