The News of the World hired a specialist private investigator to run covert surveillance on two of the lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an operation to put pressure on them to stop their work.
The investigator secretly videoed Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris as well as family members and associates. Evidence suggests this was part of an attempt to gather evidence for false smears about their private lives.
The News of the World also took specialist advice in an attempt to injunct Lewis to prevent him from representing the victims of hacking and attempted to persuade one of his former clients to sue him.
PHOTO: EPA
The surveillance of Lewis and Harris occurred during the past 18 months, when News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch’s son James Murdoch was executive chairman of the paper’s parent company, News International.
He is due to give a second round of evidence to a House of Commons select committee tomorrow and is likely to face intense questioning about the quality of his leadership.
Neither lawyer would comment, but friends say they are furious at what they see as an attempt at “blackmail” and are considering suing the News of the World for breach of privacy. They have previously had to reassure clients that their private lives would not be exposed if they dared to sue the paper.
Lewis and Harris have been part of a small group of lawyers who have mounted a series of devastating legal actions against News International. Separately, they represented Gordon Taylor and Max Clifford, the first two hacking victims to sue the company for hacking their phones.
Harris also acts for soccer agent Sky Andrew, whose case led in January to the resignation of the prime minister’s media adviser, Andy Coulson. Lewis also represents the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose case led to the closure of the News of the World in July.
Emerging evidence suggests they were targeted on at least two occasions by Derek Webb, an investigator who specializes in physically following people and in making secret videos of their movements. Webb has worked for the News of the World since 2003, following hundreds of targets, including members of the royal family and serving Cabinet ministers.
E-mails that have been recovered by Scotland Yard disclose the names of those working for News International who hatched the plans.
Webb was tasked as part of an attempt to prove a false claim that Harris was having an affair with a Manchester solicitor and other false claims about the private life of Charlotte Harris and her children. It is not yet clear exactly how the News of the World would have used the information if any claim had proved to be true.
In the spring of last year, following a hostile report by the Commons media select committee, the News of the World hired Webb to gather evidence on Lewis. For reasons that are not yet clear, he focused on Lewis’ former wife and secretly filmed her home in Manchester, following her and making further video of her and her daughter as they visited local shops and a garden center.
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