Fraud nurse trial: A view from the press bench in Cardiff

Press benches are usually small seats, mostly wooden and the cause of aches and pains if journalists sit on them for any length of time.

But what they lack in comfort, they more than make up for in a privileged view of trials.

We can see everyone and everything that goes on in court and everyone can see us.

And in the trial of Tanya Nasir, that was a problem, a very serious problem which could have landed me in the cells.

But before I get to that, I will explain why I was sitting on the press bench.

Tanya Nasir was tried and convicted of nine counts of fraud and fraud by false representation, and she has now been jailed for five years.

She claimed to be a highly qualified nurse with extensive experience in areas including adult and child intensive care.

She said she had dentistry and operating theatre qualifications as well as degrees in physics, astrophysics and a masters qualification in leadership.

She also claimed to be a reservist in what she said was the “Royal British Army”.

Nasir claimed to have served in a field hospital “500 metres from the front line in Afghanistan”, as well as in Iraq and Kosovo.

She told an interview panel she would need time off to train with her regiment on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, home to British and US military bases.

Then there was her work with charities including the Red Cross and Oxfam, bringing aid to people in conflict zones around the world.

It was all absolute rubbish.

By faking references and lying about her qualifications and her Army career, she secured nursing posts in London and Bedfordshire.

Then, in 2019, she was appointed to a senior role at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend.

She became the neonatal ward manager. It was a hugely responsible and important post, leading a department of nurses and doctors caring for the smallest and sickest babies.

Five months after she began work there, she was found out by a sharp-eyed matron who noticed something was not quite right about the code on her Nursing and Midwifery Council registration.

It read 13 – to denote that she had qualified as a nurse in the financial year 2013/14. But during the interview for the job and on her application form, she said she had qualified in 2010.

That is when the lies unravelled and, in July this year, she went on trial.