A MAN who was convicted of murdering a waiter 14 years after the crime has spoken from behind bars about his attempts to flee justice after the guilty verdict.

Michael Ross, 34, killed Shamsuddin Mahmood in Kirkwall, Orkney, in 1994 but only faced court in October 2008.

He then tried to flee court after he was convicted of the murder of the Bangladeshi waiter.

A weapons cache, including a machine pistol and a hand grenade, was later found in a car he had left at a car park in the city.

In a letter, he insisted he was not planning a killing spree, despite taking with him a machine gun he had brought back illegally from Kosovo. He insisted he had planned to escape to the Highlands to "live off the land".

He said: "I thought, 'if it looks bad in the last week of my trial, I will just go and live in the hills in the Highlands and just live off the land'."