British police knew that Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid had hacked into the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler nine years before the scandal over the practice exploded, an English chief constable said on Thursday.
The revelation raises new questions about whether police deliberately overlooked evidence of illegal behavior at the News of the World for fear of jeopardizing their relationship with it and other papers in Murdoch’s powerful media empire.
In a letter to lawmakers disclosed on Thursday, Surrey Police Chief Constable Mark Rowley said that his force knew as far back as April 2002 that someone working for the News of the World had accessed Dowler’s voicemail, an act which gave false hope to the missing teen’s family and could potentially have interfered with the investigation into her high-profile disappearance.
Rowley acknowledged that no effort had been made to prosecute anyone at the paper over the spying and that the information about the phone hacking was not passed on until earlier this year. He said an inquiry team “is currently looking into why this was the case.”
Although former journalists say that the practice of hacking into people’s phones to score scoops was common across British tabloids in the early 2000s, the spying did not come to the public’s attention until 2006, when the News of the World’s royal editor Clive Goodman was arrested for eavesdropping on members of the British royal household.
The News of the World long insisted that the practice had been limited to a single rogue journalist, but its explanation unraveled as evidence emerged that the hacking had been systematic across the tabloid. Public anger at the News of the World grew and the scandal boiled over after the Guardian newspaper revealed that the tabloid had hacked into Milly’s phone at a time when her family hoped the missing 13-year-old might still be alive.
Dowler’s remains were found months later. Former nightclub bouncer Levi Bellfield was found guilty of her murder in June.
The idea that a tabloid would violate the privacy of a murdered teen — and potentially derail one of the country’s most important missing persons investigations — revolted Britons and led to a crippling advertising boycott. So strong was public outrage that Murdoch closed the 168-year-old paper in July and flew to Britain to apologize to the Dowler family.
News Corp’s newspaper arm says it is attempting to negotiate a settlement with the Dowlers and has offered them ￡2 million (US$3.15 million) in compensation, according to unsourced reports in the UK media last month.
However, those moves have so far failed to stem the scandal, which has claimed several senior News Corp executives and dealt a hammer blow to Murdoch’s influence in Britain.
Police have also come under scrutiny for their close ties to Murdoch’s UK newspaper arm, News International. Two top Scotland Yard officials have resigned after journalists unearthed overlapping personal, professional and business interests linking them and others to News International.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS