The jury returned not guilty verdicts on 12 charges and returned a not proven verdict on a charge of sexual assault with intent to rape.
Salmond had denied all the charges and giving evidence claimed some were ‘deliberate fabrications for a political purpose’.
The 65-year-old was first arrested and charged by Police Scotland in relation to the allegations in January 2019.
In an emotional speech on the steps outside court, Salmond thanked his friends and family for standing by him while referencing the coronavirus pandemic.
He said: ‘Whatever nightmare I’ve been in over these last two years is nothing compared to the nightmare that every single one of us is currently living through.
‘My strong, strong advice is to go home, those who can and are able to, care take of your families; and God help us all.’
Alex Salmond spoke to reporters outside the High Court in Edinburgh today after he was cleared of attempted rape and a series of sexual assaults
The former first minister of Scotland bumped elbows with a lawyer as he left the court today
Speaking outside court after the verdict, Salmond thanked the courts, police and his legal time.
He also thanked friends and family, ‘for standing by me over the last two years.’
He added: ‘As many of you will know there was certain evidence that I would like to have seen led in this trial but for a variety of reasons we were not able to do so.
‘At some point that information, that facts, and that evidence will see the light of day but it won’t be this day, and it won’t be this day for a very good reason.
‘And that is whatever nightmare I’ve been in over these last two years is as of nothing compared to the nightmare that every single one of us is currently living through.
‘People are dying, many more are going to die. What we are doing now, and I know you’ve got a job to do, is not safe.
‘My strong, strong advice is to go home, those who can and are able to, care take of your families and god help us all.’
How one of Scotland’s most senior politicians was put on trial to prove he was an innocent man cruelly framed
By John Dingwall
It was the shocking case that put one of Scotland’s most senior politicians in the dock with a jury being asked to decide whether he was either an evil sexual predator or an innocent man cruelly framed.
The arrest of former Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond saw him face 13 charges including one of attempted rape, one of intent to rape, nine charges of sexual assault and two of indecent assault.
Insisting on his innocence from the beginning and throughout the trial, he instructed his top level legal team, the leader of the Scottish bar, Gordon Jackson QC, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, and Shelagh McCall QC, to represent his case at the High Court case in Edinburgh.
He had strongly denied all charges alleged to have been committed against nine women over a six-year period.
Earlier in the trial, he was acquitted of a 10th sexual assault allegation after that charge was withdrawn by the prosecution.
At one stage during proceedings, Salmond dramatically took to the stand and said the charges were fabrications and exaggerations and in some cases had been orchestrated for political reasons.
Among some of the more lurid allegations was one by a former Scottish Government official, Woman H, who told the court of an alleged attempted rape in June 2014.
She said she felt ‘hunted’ by Salmond moments before the alleged incident at the first minister’s official residence, Bute House in Edinburgh.
She also told the court she had been sexually assaulted by him in May 2014 when he allegedly kissed her face, neck and touched her legs.
But Salmond denied the incidents took place during those months.
He said there had, however, been a consensual sexual encounter the previous year.
He added: ‘Neither party were naked but in a state of partial undress, in terms of buttons or whatever.
‘It shouldn’t have happened but both of us agreed it would be put behind us.’
Salmond, who described himself to the court as a ‘journalist’ and ‘retired politician’, added: ‘It was just two old friends and things had gone too far.
‘Both of us realised it wasn’t a good idea and we parted good friends.’
He said Woman H was ‘one of my biggest cheerleaders’ but seemed ‘annoyed’ after he did not help her professionally in 2015.
He said her account of an alleged attempted rape was ‘not true’ and she was not at Bute House on the night in question.
A businesswoman also cast doubt on the allegation when she said she did not recall seeing a complainer on the evening the alleged assault was said to have taken place.
Woman H, had said the incident, at Bute House, had followed a dinner.
The defence witness, a company director, said she was at the dinner with Mr Salmond and another guest.
Asked if Woman H had been there, the businesswoman said she did not recall seeing Woman H ‘at any point’ during that evening.
A Scottish celebrity supporter of Scottish independence, however, said by video link that the woman who accused Alex Salmond of attempted rape was present on the night she alleged the attack took place.
A former SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh also testified that Woman H had texted her to say it would ‘be great’ to work with Mr Salmond again in 2015.
She said Woman H was later ‘clearly very annoyed’ that her project had not been endorsed by Mr Salmond.
Ms Ahmed-Sheikh also said she had been at Stirling Castle in November 2014 and had watched Mr Salmond having his photograph taken with a former civil servant known as Woman K, but had not seen anything untoward.
The former first minister was alleged to have put his hand on the bottom of Woman K while the photograph was being taken.
During the trial, a civil servant also told how Alex Salmond asked her to recreate a Jack Vettriano painting, featuring a woman wearing a skimpy Santa outfit kissing a man.
She said that moments later he began ‘wrestling’ with her ‘like an octopus’.
The woman, known as Woman B, testified that Salmond sexually assaulted her after a meeting at Bute House, in Edinburgh, in 2010.
Mr Salmond had just been advised not to send out a painting by the Scottish artist – called Ae Fond Kiss – as his Christmas card because it would be ‘deeply inappropriate’.
Woman B said that, once they were alone, Mr Salmond said to her: ‘Let’s recreate the pose on the Christmas card.’
She said: ‘He grabbed my wrists and pulled me towards him. I was shocked.
‘He was very persistent. It felt like I was sort of wrestling with an octopus; there was always another hand coming at my wrists.’
Salmond had told jurors he had never had a non-consensual relationship with a woman in his life as he was questioned about another allegation that he assaulted a woman in his bedroom at Bute House in late 2013.
He said he and a Scottish Government official, known as Woman F, had ‘collapsed into what I would describe as a sleepy cuddle’ on a bed after they drank the Chinese spirit Maotai together.
Salmond claimed he said sorry two weeks later when the issue was raised by one of his staff, saying she had a ‘legitimate grievance, even if it wasn’t what actually happened and not what was presented at the time’.
Salmond said: ‘I apologised. I was the first minister. She was in my bedroom. We were tipsy, it shouldn’t have happened.’
Salmond also insisted during the trial that some of the accusations against him have been ‘deliberate fabrications for a political purpose’.
He told jurors that one of his accusers had encouraged at least five other people to exaggerate or make claims against him.
The senior Scottish Government official, known as Woman A, said he sexually assaulted her in Glasgow between June and July 2008.
But Salmond told the jury: ‘I would never, under any circumstances, be touching (the complainer) inappropriately.
‘These are all public places. It would be insane to do anything like that. These claims are a fabrication.’
Mr Salmond’s lawyer, Gordon Jackson, QC., had argued there was not enough evidence to prove Salmond guilty.
In his closing speech to the trial on Friday of last week, he said the allegations against his client didn’t ‘make sense’ when examined closely.
He added that the Crown had not proven that the former SNP leader was guilty of any criminal offences during the two-week trial.
‘If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here,’ he said.
‘I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.
‘But I’m in a court of law and I’m dealing not with whether he could have been a better man, because he certainly could have been better.
‘I’m dealing with whether or not it was established he was guilty of serious, sometimes very serious, criminal charges.’
Mr Jackson went on to say there was a ‘pattern’ in the case where ‘something that was thought nothing of at the time’ later become a criminal charge at the High Court.
He told the jury that it required a ‘very, very high standard of proof’ to find Mr Salmond guilty, and insisted allegations against his client ‘don’t make sense and are never going to make sense’ when they are examined closely.
But prosecutor Alex Prentice QC painted Mr Salmond was a ‘sexual predator’ who had used his position and power to ‘satisfy his sexual desires with impunity’.
Trial judge Lady Dorrian had told the jury they must set aside ’emotional considerations, sympathies or indeed prejudices’ before asking them to retire to consider their verdicts on Friday.
She reminded the jury that there were three verdicts available to them, guilty, not guilty or not proven, according to Scottish law, the latter two being verdicts of acquittal.
But there was further drama when two jurors were discharged before a verdict was reached, with the remaining 13 told they still required a majority of eight to reach a guilty verdict.