This reinforces for me that the police were not doing their job properly

Wrongly convicted Barry George says Serb must be quizzed

- MATTHEW YOUNG and PETTIFOR TOM

THE man wrongly convicted of Jill Dando's murder insists police must investigate a Serbian assassin identified as running from the direction of the crime.

Barry George spent eight years in jail for the killing before being released in 2008 when he was unanimously acquitted after a retrial.

Milorad Ulemek was this week identified by a key witness as the man she saw fleeing and also on CCTV detectives showed her in May 1999.

But police did not launch an action to trace, interview and eliminate the man on CCTV for almost a year, and never found him.

George, now 64, told us: "It makes me very concerned that the police aren't doing their job properly.  It reinforces that they weren't doing their job properly."

He said Ulemek must now be questioned over Crimewatch star Jill's shooting outside her home, which occurred 25 years ago tomorrow.

He said: "If he's the person who committed that crime then he should face the full letter of the law and be brought from Serbia to the UK and be dealt with through the courts - and not anyone who worked on the previous case."

In a hotel on the outskirts of Cork, Ireland, where George now lives, we revealed our findings to him and sister, Michelle Bates, who has spent 24 years fighting his corner.

As a result of our investigation, a key witness from the day of the murder this week identified Ulemek as the man she saw running from the direction of the crime, a short distance from Jill's home.

She was one of four witnesses who saw a man running along Fulham Palace Road in south-west London, minutes after Jill was shot outside her home nearby.

One month after the murder, Metropolitan Police officers asked the same witness to view CCTV from nearby Putney Bridge Underground station.

On May 24 and 25, 1999, she identified a man in the images as being the running man.