Deputy High Court Judge Richard Mawrey QC, the Election Commissioner, who presided over hearings into the Aston and Bordesley Green petitions, delivered a 192-page judgment.

This is what it says on some of the personalities in the case...

Sir Albert Bore

Mr Mawrey was critical of a statement issued by Sir Albert, the former Labour leader of Birmingham City Council, which said: "As a candidate, I am allowed to apply for postal voting on your behalf, collect the forms, have it delivered to my address, fill it in for you, put it together and deliver it to the elections office.

"There is nothing illegal about it, but it looks and it feels wrong. That is why the system needs to be looked at again."

Mr Mawrey described Sir Albert's statement as "incredibly foolish".

The commissioner added: "As a statement of the legal position, Sir Albert could hardly have got the matter more wrong. Anyone following his advice would be committing, at least, three and, on one view, four criminal offences, most of which carry sentences of imprisonment.

"I cannot help feeling that some of the more irresponsible of the Labour Party supporters must have been encouraged by this statement to believe that, if they set about vote-rigging, they would have the blessing of the leadership.

"I am sure that nothing could have been further from Sir Albert's mind than encouragement of fraud, but that is how his statement was taken, certainly by his political opponents."

John Owen

The 2004 city council polls were a "tragedy" for Mr Owen, Birmingham's elections officer.

Mr Mawrey added: "He is one of the UK's principal experts in the law and conduct of elections. His experience and his expertise are unrivalled. He spent the five years since postal voting on demand was introduced warning that there were no real safeguards against fraud. All he foretold has come to pass but, sadly, it has come to pass in his own bailiwick.

"It must be heart-rending for Mr Owen to see massive electoral fraud committed, almost before his eyes, knowing that he was powerless to do anything about it."

John Hemming

The deputy leader of Birmingham City Council and leader of the Liberal Democrat group, who wrote the Aston petition, was a "dreadful witness", Mr Mawrey said.

The commissioner added: "His evidence was largely inadmissible hearsay. He possesses an inability to give a straight answer to a straight question which would be the envy of a national politician appearing on the Today programme.

"But when all that is said and done, Mr Hemming was right and his critics were wrong.

"He said that there was massive, Birmingham-wide electoral fraud by the Labour Party and there was, in fact, massive Birmingham-wide fraud by the Labour Party.

"He may have played the part of Cassandra but, like Cassandra, his prophesies were true. He emerges from the case with credit, which is more than can be said for those police officers who treated his complaints as no more than Operation Gripe."

Muhammad Afzal

The Aston Labour councillor was said by Mr Mawrey to be the ringleader of the voteriggers, who told "barefaced lies" in the witness box in an attempt to save his neck.

Mr Afzal denied being present at a warehouse at midnight shortly before polling day when police discovered Labour candidates and supporters surrounded by 275 postal votes spread out across a table.

But records of Mr Afzal's mobile phone calls on the night showed he had made a number of calls to the owner of the warehouse at a time he claimed to be at home in bed.

Mr Mawrey added: "Mr Afzal's evidence became wilder and wilder and less and less credible. Obvious lie followed obvious lie until even Mr Afzal realised he was doing himself no favours. Mr Afzal lied like a trooper. I had no difficulty in being satisfied Mr Afzal was at the warehouse."

Lin Homer

The city council's chief executive and returning officer allowed corners to be cut and election law to be broken by permitting postal votes to be transferred to the count in plastic shopping bags. But the breaches were not serious enough to render the conduct of the election illegal, Mr Mawrey ruled.

However, he added: "I am very disquieted by the way postal votes were treated.

"I am bound to say that using informal methods to transport unprocessed postal votes to the count in large quantities was an act of the direst folly, particularly as the elections office knew very well that there was considerable disquiet, not to say paranoia, on the subject of postal-vote fraud."

The Labour Party

Mr Mawrey decided that fraud and corruption at the 2004 council elections was not confined to Aston and Bordesley Green.

He came to an "inescapable conclusion" that the two wards were part of a Birmingham-wide campaign by the local Labour Party to try, by the use of bogus postal-votes, to counter the adverse effect of the Iraq war on its electoral fortunes.

West Mids Police

The police did nothing to prevent the frauds which occurred, even naming their investigation into alleged offences "Operation Gripe", Mr Mawrey noted.

He added: "If presented with clear evidence of electoral misconduct they may take action but, as the Aston trial showed, they can easily be persuaded to ignore blatantly unlawful conduct by plausible rogues."