Tag: phone hacking
U.K. PM’s Ex-Aide Coulson Jailed In Murdoch Hacking Case

U.K. PM’s Ex-Aide Coulson Jailed In Murdoch Hacking Case

London (AFP) – Andy Coulson, the former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and one-time top aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron, was jailed for 18 months on Friday for his role in the phone-hacking scandal that closed the tabloid.

The sentence passed by a judge at the Old Bailey court in London caps a stunning fall from grace for 46-year-old Coulson, who once enjoyed access to the heights of the British establishment.

Four former colleagues at the now-defunct tabloid received shorter sentences for hacking the mobile phone voicemails of thousands of royals, celebrities and politicians in what prosecutors called a “criminal enterprise”.

Cameron — who was forced to make a public apology after Coulson was convicted last week at the end of an eight-month trial — said on Friday that the sentence showed “no one is above the law”.

Murdoch shut down the News of the World in July 2011 amid public outrage after it emerged that Britain’s biggest selling paper had illegally accessed the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl.

Judge John Saunders said Coulson was receiving the longest jail term because of his senior role at the paper.

“Mr Coulson has to take the major share of the blame for phone hacking at the News of the World. He knew about it, he encouraged it when he should have stopped it,” the judge said.

Former News of the World news editor Greg Miskiw and chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck were each sentenced to six months imprisonment for phone hacking.

Journalist James Weatherup and private detective Glenn Mulcaire each received suspended sentences and were ordered to perform community service.

All four had previously pleaded guilty.

Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Murdoch’s British newspaper arm and editor of the News of the World from 2000 to 2003, was cleared of all charges at the trial, along with her husband and three other people.

Coulson was editor of the News of the World from 2003 to 2007, when he resigned after Mulcaire and former royal editor Clive Goodman were jailed in the first ever phone-hacking prosecutions.

He always insisted he knew nothing of their activities and was hired months later by Cameron, whose Conservative party was then in opposition, as his communications chief.

Coulson resigned from that job in 2011 when the hacking scandal blew up again.

During mitigation hearings this week ahead of the sentencing, Coulson blamed lawyers at the tabloid for failing to tell him that phone-hacking was illegal.

But the judge said this was no defence in law.

“The evidence is clear that there was a very great deal of phone hacking while Andy Coulson was editor,” he said.

The trial itself ranged from the scandalous to the arcane, hearing evidence that Brooks and married father-of-three Coulson had an affair, before delving into months of hearings on the workings of the newspaper.

Brooks said last week that she felt “vindicated” and that her thoughts were with colleagues still facing legal action.

But the verdicts heaped embarrassment on Cameron.

He reacted to the sentence in a statement on Friday, saying: “What it says is that it’s right that justice should be done, and that no one is above the law, as I’ve always said.”

Last week he admitted it was the “wrong decision” to take on Coulson, although he denied ignoring warnings about the journalist’s activities at the News of the World.

Cameron was then rebuked by the judge for speaking out about the case, one of the most expensive in British criminal history, before it was finished.

The prosecution has asked for £750,000 ($1.3 million) in legal costs from Coulson and the others.

Coulson and Goodman also face a retrial on charges of paying a police officer for royal telephone directories, after the jury in the original trial failed to reach a verdict.

The phone-hacking scandal prompted a major judge-led inquiry on the reform of Britain’s notoriously raucous press.

AFP Photo/Cyril Villemain

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.”

 

Ex-Tabloid Editor Rebekah Brooks Acquitted In Phone-Hacking Trial

Ex-Tabloid Editor Rebekah Brooks Acquitted In Phone-Hacking Trial

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

LONDON — Former tabloid editor Rebekah Brooks, a close confidante of Rupert Murdoch and once one of Britain’s most influential women, was acquitted Tuesday of phone hacking, corruption and obstruction of justice in a case that shook this country to its core and exposed the uncomfortably close ties between politicians, police and the press.

But Brooks’ former deputy, Andy Coulson, was found guilty of hacking into cellphones and accessing private voicemail messages when he worked at the now-defunct News of the World. Coulson went on to become the top communications aide to Prime Minister David Cameron, who is likely to face uncomfortable questions about his judgment in hiring a man who is now a convicted criminal.

The jury also cleared Brooks’ husband, Charlie Brooks; her former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter; and the director of security at Murdoch’s News International, Mark Hanna, of charges that they tried to cover up wrongdoing and conceal evidence as police launched an investigation into widespread phone hacking.

Authorities believe that the News of the World tapped into the voicemail boxes of hundreds of people, including famous actors, politicians and sports figures. The scandal exploded in July 2011 with revelations that the paper had even accessed messages left on the cellphone of a kidnapped 13-year-old girl who was later found killed.

Amid the public revulsion that followed, Murdoch shuttered the 168-year-old tabloid, and Brooks, 46, resigned as chief of his British newspapers. The head of Scotland Yard stepped down over accusations of too-cozy relations between police and the media, and a controversial bid by Murdoch to expand his broadcast holdings in Britain sank into oblivion.

Tuesday’s verdicts came after a week of jury deliberation in one of the longest criminal trials in British history. Over seven months, the panel heard from dozens of witnesses, examined thousands of documents and listened to salacious details of the defendants’ personal lives that were worthy of the tabloids under scrutiny.

Besides the Brooks, Carpenter and Hanna, another former senior editor, Stuart Kuttner, was acquitted of phone hacking.

Verdicts are still outstanding on charges against former reporter Clive Goodman, who admitted on the witness stand that he had hacked into the cellphones of Prince William and his wife, the former Kate Middleton, nearly 200 times.

Coulson, too, is still awaiting a verdict on charges that he paid public officials for information.

Photo: JonJon2k8 via Flickr

Britain’s Phone Hacking Trial Hears Of Tony Blair’s Advice

Britain’s Phone Hacking Trial Hears Of Tony Blair’s Advice

By Janet Stobart, Los Angeles Times

LONDON — Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair offered to act as a secret adviser to Rupert Murdoch and two of his newspaper executives as they confronted revelations of illegal phone hacking, a London jury heard Wednesday.

The disclosure — contained in an email sent by Rebekah Brooks, a former executive of News International, once the British branch of Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire, and to Murdoch’s son and deputy, James — came as prosecutors wrapped up their case against seven defendants charged in the scandal.

In the email dated July 11, 2011, Brooks said she had spent an hour on the phone with Blair, who was “available for you, KRM (Rupert Murdoch) and me as unofficial adviser, but needs to be between us.”

Brooks is one of the defendants in the trial stemming from revelations that employees at Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid, which she edited, eavesdropped on the voicemails of celebrities, politicians, royalty and even a teenager who was sexually assaulted and killed. The public outcry prompted the Murdoch family to close the popular, 168-year-old Sunday paper.

Brooks faces charges that include conspiracy to intercept cellphone messages, bribery of public officials and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by concealing evidence. Also on trial are Andy Coulson, another former News of the World editor who became chief press officer to Prime Minister David Cameron, Brooks’ husband, Charlie, and other former senior editors and journalists. All the defendants deny the charges against them.

According to the email read in court Wednesday, Blair advised Brooks to set up an independent, public inquiry led by a criminal lawyer and “get them to publish a Hutton-style report,” a reference to an investigation that in 2004 cleared Blair’s government of wrongdoing in its handling of intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Blair’s advice, Brooks continued, was to “publish part one of the report at the same time as the police closes its inquiry and clear you and accept shortcomings and new solutions and process, and part two when any trials are over.”

He also advised against “short-term solutions as they only give you long-term headaches” and told Brooks: “Keep strong and definitely [take] sleeping pills.”

In a statement issued later Wednesday, Blair’s office confirmed that the conversation took place but said, “This was Mr. Blair simply giving informal advice over the phone.”

“He made it absolutely clear to Ms. Brooks that, though he knew nothing personally about the facts of the case, in a situation as serious as this it was essential to have a fully transparent and independent process to get to the bottom of what had happened,” the statement said.

“That inquiry should be led by credible people, get all the facts out there,” it continued. “If anything wrong were found, there should be immediate action taken … so that they could not happen again.”

The trial in London’s Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey, is scheduled to continue Thursday with the defense presenting its case.

Photo: JonJon2k8 via Flickr