07/09/2026
More than three decades after waiter Shamsuddin Mahmood was shot dead in an Orkney restaurant, the case that refuses to go away is once again under scrutiny.
Michael Ross, who was 15 at the time of the 1994 murder and was convicted in 2008, has always maintained his innocence. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has now accepted a fresh application to re-examine his conviction — a process that could ultimately see the case returned to the courts.
As director Stephen Bennett says: “We are still talking about this case 32 years later. This is a case that never seems to go away. Many people would say that’s because it doesn’t make sense. There are too many curiosities in this case.”
Watch The Man in the Mask: An Orkney Murder on BBC iPlayer.
