Murder accused 'is Army sniper'

Shamsuddin Mahmood was shot dead at his work in 1994

A man accused of murdering a waiter in Orkney 14 years ago is an Army sniper, his father has told a court.

Soldier Michael Ross, 29, denies shooting Shamsuddin Mahmood, 26, in a restaurant in Kirkwall in 1994.

Edmund Ross, a police officer at the time, told the High Court in Glasgow his son is a sergeant in a Black Watch sniper platoon.

Michael Ross, now living in Inverness, was 15 at the time of the waiter's death.

His 57-year-old father, now an undertaker, was a police firearms officer when Mr Mahmood died.

He told the trial how he gave his son a deactivated sub-machine gun as a present. He also had guns and ammunition locked in secure cabinets in their attic.

It was going cheap and I bought it and I just gave it to him as an interest item. It is basically a lump of useless metal Edmund Ross Witness

He was asked by Brian McConnachie QC, prosecuting, where a deactivated machine gun found in his son's bedroom had come from.

He replied: "I gave it to him as a gift."

Mr McConnachie asked: "A gift of a machine gun?"

Mr Ross told him: "It is not a machine gun, it is a deactivated one. It was going cheap and I bought it and I just gave it to him as an interest item. It is basically a lump of useless metal."

Earlier, Mr Ross told the court that he was off-duty when he was called out on the night of the shooting.

Cartridge case

He said that he interviewed diners from the restaurant in Kirkwall Police Station that night, and guarded the front of the restaurant the following day.

While he was doing that, he told the court, a cartridge case was found in the restaurant and he was asked what he knew about it.

He said that he knew that it was a military cartridge and later went home and checked reference books, discovering that it was from an arsenal in India.

He told the court that weeks after the shooting he admitted to other officers he had a sealed box of cartridges of a similar make to the bullet that killed the waiter.

Mr Ross said on 12 August, 1994, he told police that he had a box of 9mm ammunition.

When asked when he discovered the ammunition, he said: "Shortly before it was handed over. I was going through my ammunition box checking what I had and it was in the bottom corner."

Two keys

Mr Ross was asked if he was surprised by an allegation that around the time of the murder his son had a gun on Scapa Beach, which he claimed that he had taken from his dad's gun cabinet.

He replied: "Yes."

When asked by Mr McConnachie how many keys he had to the gun cabinet, he said there were two and that one set was kept at his mother's house.

Initially, he said that the other set was always with him, but later admitted that he could possibly have been "cavalier" with the keys.

Mr Ross admitted in court that he had lied to police in a statement given on 6 December, 1994, when he told them that he did not know where the second set of keys were, although they were somewhere in the house.

He said that he did not tell the police that the second set were at his mother's home because he did not want her involved.

Michael Ross is accused of entering the restaurant with his face masked and shooting Mr Mahmood in the head.

Uttering threats

He is also accused of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by changing his clothing and disposing of the weapon.

He is further charged with, while acting with others whose identities are unknown, committing a breach of the peace outside the Indian restaurant by shouting, swearing, uttering threats of violence and racist abuse.

That offence was allegedly committed sometime between 3 May and 24 May, 1994.

Mr Ross is further accused of crouching behind a wall and trees in a mask and committing a breach of the peace on May 19, 1994, in Papdale Woods, Kirkwall.

He denies all charges and has lodged a special defence of alibi claiming he was nowhere near the Indian restaurant or Kirkwall town centre, but was cycling in another part of Orkney.

The trial, before Lord Hardie, continues.