THE family of a Cwmbran private detective who was murdered 31 years ago have slammed a court's ruling to award compensation to three men who were accused of the murder.

Earlier this week the Court of Appeal ruled Jonathan Rees, and brothers Glenn and Garry Vian, who were all arrested following the murder of Daniel Morgan, who was found dead in the car park of a London pub on March 10, 1987, and spent two years in prison before charges were dropped, are entitled to compensation.

The case against the three collapsed after it emerged witness Gary Eaton, who claimed to have come onto the scene shortly after Mr Morgan was attacked, had been "coached" by Metropolitan Police DCS David Cook in his desperation to see the case solved.

Mr Morgan, who was 37, was allegedly investigating corruption within the Met when he was killed. And his brother Alastair, who has long campaigned for those responsible for his murder to be held to account, slammed the ruling, claiming DSC Cook had been made a "scapegoat".

“The concerns that we have raised over the decades about the police corruption at the heart of Daniel’s murder have remained wholly unaddressed by this litigation," he said.

"Instead, it has been focussed simply on the conduct of DCS David Cook as the senior investigating officer in charge of the last police investigation into the murder and the ensuing prosecution which collapsed in 2011."

Mr Morgan said he and his family have done "everything democratically and legally possible" to secure justice for his brother in the 31 years since his death, only to be met with ""stubborn obstruction and worse". And he called the "vilification" of DSC Cook "a grave travesty of justice". "We were failed utterly by all of the institutions designed to protect us, and we saw for ourselves a criminal justice system which proved incapable of coming to terms with the murder or the subsequent criminality of those charged with enforcing the law," he said.

“In the midst of such a tragic mess, we recognise that David Cook and his team did their utmost to redress the catastrophic failures of earlier investigations.

"In the process, they made themselves unpopular with many in the hierarchy of the Metropolitan Police, especially those who would have preferred to leave unturned the stones behind which the stench of police corruption continued to flourish."