FORMER MSP and convicted perjurer Tommy Sheridan has had his electronic tag removed - and immediately vowed he would be proved innocent.

The socialist firebrand, aged 48, has been subjected to a curfew between 7.15pm and 7.15am since his early release from Castle Huntly prison in January.

As he lifted up the leg tag he said he would continue the fight to overthrow his conviction.

Mr Sheridan, who was wearing a T-shirt depicting the Scots socialist revolutionary John Maclean, said: "I am confident that in the course of the next six, or maybe nine months, that I will stand before you in another press conference, not as a convicted perjurer but as an innocent man.

"I am confident the conviction will be quashed and the Court of Appeal will have to accept that I was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and that the jury in 2010 were deliberately misled by the evidence, but also misled because they weren't given access to all of the evidence that was available but was not disclosed."

He was jailed for three years in January 2011 after being found guilty of perjury during his 2006 defamation action against the News of the World.

The former MSP was awarded £200,000 in damages after winning the civil case but a jury at the High Court in Glasgow found him guilty of lying about the now-defunct tabloid's claims that he was an adulterer who visited a swingers' club.

He said: "Six months ago I said that I would return to the High Court in Glasgow -- not as the accused but as the accuser - the accuser of people who set out to form and execute a criminal conspiracy against myself, my friends and my political comrades, in order to try and win a civil trial which they lost and a criminal trial that they narrowly won.

"That day is coming - when they will have to stand and answer to the lies and damned lies that they told."

Mr Sheridan said he planned a family holiday to celebrate having his tag removed.

He said: "It does feel quite liberating - I have been a house prisoner for six months and obviously I was a physical prisoner for the year before that. It has been a long 18 months."

He said he was looking forward to getting more involved in Solidarity, the party he set up after his split from the Scottish Socialist Party.

matty.sutton@eveningtimes.co.uk