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Tag: andy coulson
Former Aide To British Prime Minister To Be Retried On Bribery Charge

Former Aide To British Prime Minister To Be Retried On Bribery Charge

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

LONDON — A former top aide to Prime Minister David Cameron, already convicted of conspiring to hack into private cellphones, is to be retried on bribery charges, prosecutors said Monday.
Andy Coulson will face a jury again to defend himself from allegations that, as editor of one of Britain’s most notorious tabloids, he and a reporter paid police officers for a phone directory of the royal household. The first jury was unable to agree on a verdict on those charges last week, resulting in a mistrial.

But the panel did find Coulson guilty of conspiring to tap into private cellphone messages. Investigators say that journalists at the News of the World, before and during Coulson’s tenure as editor, hacked into the phones of hundreds of people in order to land scoops and discover details of the private lives of celebrities, politicians, and even crime victims.

Coulson, 46, faces sentencing for that conviction later this week. He could spend up to two years in prison.

He was the only person convicted in a months-long trial of seven people accused of wrongdoing in the phone-hacking scandal. The defendants were variously accused of intercepting voicemail messages, paying public officials for information, and trying to thwart the police investigation into the allegations.

The most prominent of the seven on trial, Rebekah Brooks, Coulson’s predecessor as editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World, was acquitted of all charges. Brooks, a close confidante of Murdoch’s, was forced to resign as head of his British newspaper empire when the scandal erupted three years ago upon revelations that the hacking victims included a 13-year-old kidnapped girl.

Coulson’s conviction is a major embarrassment for Cameron, the prime minister, who hired Coulson as his chief spin doctor. Cameron has apologized in Parliament for what he acknowledges was a bad decision, but insists that Coulson misled him about his record as editor of News of the World.

Cameron’s political foes have criticized him for bringing a criminal into the heart of 10 Downing St.

Coulson is to be retried on the bribery charge along with former reporter Clive Goodman, who has already served a prison term for hacking into the cellphones of aides to the royal family.
During the trial, Goodman admitted on the witness stand that he had hacked into the phones of Prince William and his wife, the former Kate Middleton, nearly 200 times.

AFP Photo / Justin Tallis

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Britain’s Phone-Hacking Trial Ends With Just One Conviction

Britain’s Phone-Hacking Trial Ends With Just One Conviction

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

LONDON — A jury failed to reach a verdict Wednesday on the remaining counts against two defendants in Britain’s phone-hacking trial, bringing to a close one of the longest court proceedings in British history in a case that lifted the lid on the sometimes unsavory nexus of media, celebrity and politics.

Jurors deadlocked on whether former tabloid editor Andy Coulson and reporter Clive Goodman bribed someone on the British royal family’s security detail for a phone directory of the royal household. A judge at London’s Old Bailey courthouse thanked the panel members for their service and dismissed them; a decision on whether to order a retrial is expected Monday.

The hung jury means that the high-profile, eight-month trial ended with just a single conviction among the seven co-defendants variously accused of phone hacking, corruption and obstruction of justice. Coulson, 46, was found guilty Tuesday of conspiracy to commit phone hacking and faces up to two years in prison.

But the political reverberations of that lone conviction continued Wednesday with Prime Minister David Cameron defending himself in Parliament over having hired Coulson as his chief spin doctor.

The onetime editor had already been associated with illegal phone hacking when Cameron brought him into his inner circle; one of Coulson’s reporters was sent to jail in 2007 for illegally intercepting private voicemail messages. But the prime minister said he believed Coulson’s reassurances of having personally done nothing wrong.

“I always said if those assurances turned out to be wrong, I would apologize fully and frankly to this House of Commons, and I do so again today,” Cameron told lawmakers, repeating an apology he made Tuesday after the guilty verdict against Coulson was delivered. “I am sorry. This was the wrong decision.”

Opposition leader Ed Miliband blamed Cameron for an inexcusable lapse in judgment and for “willful negligence” in ignoring warnings from others about Coulson, the former editor of the now-defunct News of the World. Coulson was seen as someone able to help the Oxford-educated, upper-class Cameron connect with the millions of Britons who read the country’s popular scandal sheets.

“When it came to Andy Coulson, he just didn’t want to know the evidence,” Miliband said of Cameron. “The prime minister will always be remembered as being the first-ever occupant of his office who brought a criminal into the heart of Downing Street.”

Cameron faced another headache Wednesday when the judge in the phone-hacking trial rebuked him for speaking out about Coulson’s conviction and issuing his first apology the day before. The judge said that those comments might have unfairly swayed jury members before they reassembled Wednesday morning to try to reach agreement on the outstanding charges against Coulson and Goodman.

But there was relief among Cameron’s team that the most prominent of the seven co-defendants, Rebekah Brooks, had been acquitted of all charges against her. Brooks, 46, was head of media baron Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers, which made her one of the country’s most influential figures.

She and her husband, Charlie, who was also acquitted Tuesday, are friends of Cameron and his wife, Samantha. The two couples belong to an upper-crust, powerfully connected social set that goes horseback riding together, owns country homes and throws lavish parties.

Cameron has distanced himself from the Brookses since the phone-hacking scandal erupted three years ago. Public outrage followed revelations that, in 2002, the News of the World had hacked into the voicemail account of a missing teenage girl who was later found slain.

The incident occurred when Rebekah Brooks was the paper’s editor. but she testified in court that she was not aware of it and that she did not know her reporters were engaged in phone hacking on a sweeping scale in their pursuit of sensational scoops. Police say hundreds of actors, politicians, athletes and even crime victims had their cellphones hacked.

Three senior journalists at the News of the World have pleaded guilty to phone hacking and await sentencing.

Asst. Commissioner Cressida Dick of Scotland Yard, which has assigned dozens of officers to the ongoing investigation into phone hacking and bribery by journalists, said that “those found not guilty have been exonerated after a thorough police investigation and a fair trial. It was right that the issues were aired in a court of law.”

She added that the police have been “acutely conscious of the sensitivities of investigating a newspaper and people employed by a newspaper …. This investigation has never been about an attack on press freedom but rather establishing who may have committed criminal offenses.”

©afp.com / Justin Tallis

 

British PM Cameron Defends News Corp Ties

Conservative PM David Cameron, whose former communications director, once an editor at the now-closed News of the World, is among those indicted in the phone hacking scandal, defended his actions and promised to exact justice in front of Parliament Wednesday:

Prime Minister David Cameron told British lawmakers Wednesday that if he knew then what he knows now about his former communications director, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, he would not have offered him the job.

However, he insisted that Coulson should be considered “innocent until proven guilty” of phone hacking or of hiding it while at News of the World. But, he said, if Coulson lied about it, he should be prosecuted.

“I have said very clearly that if it turns out Andy Coulson knew about the hacking at the News of the World, he will not only have lied to me but he will have lied to the police, to a select committee, to the Press Complaints Commission and of course perjured himself in a court of law,” Cameron said. “More to the point, if that comes to pass, he could also expect to face severe criminal charges.”

He said if it turns out Coulson lied to him, “that would be a moment for a profound apology. And in that event, I can tell you I will not fall short.”

Coulson, who resigned his government post in January, has since been arrested.

Opposition leader Ed Miliband said after Cameron’s statement that the prime minister’s decision to hire Coulson left him “hamstrung by a conflict of interests” when police began investigating allegations of illegal phone hacking by the News of the World.

While it seems unlikely his (relatively thin) connection to the phone hacking scandal will hurt Cameron, it can’t be helping his image, and Labor must be hoping to ride the wave of public anxiety about the British institutions–police, politicians, media–tainted by all of this back to victory in the next election.