Coulson guilty of phone hacking but Brooks cleared
Print Edition
REBEKAH Brooks, the former boss of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm, was acquitted yesterday of orchestrating a campaign to hack into phones and bribe officials in a case that has shaken the British political establishment.
A jury at London’s Old Bailey court cleared Brooks unanimously but found Andy Coulson — her former lover and Prime Minister David Cameron’s ex-media chief — guilty of conspiring to intercept messages to break news about royalty, celebrities and victims of crime.
The conviction in one of the most expensive criminal trials in British legal history forced Cameron to apologize for hiring Coulson in 2007 when the Conservative leader gave him a “second chance” after he had already quit one of Murdoch’s newspapers as the hacking scandal brewed.
“I’m extremely sorry that I employed him, it was the wrong decision,” said the British leader. “I asked him questions about if he knew about phone hacking and he said that he didn’t and I accepted those assurances.”
The jury is still deliberating over whether Coulson also sanctioned illegal payments to public officials to generate lurid exclusives for the News of the World, which was Britain’s biggest selling title until the scandal forced its closure.
On hearing the verdict read out by the jury’s foreman, Brooks looked stunned and drew a sharp intake of breath. Visibly shaking, she was led away by a nurse. Coulson, who faces jail, was impassive.
Wearing a white jumper that contrasted to her striking red hair, Brooks later walked from the court through a scrum of photographers, clutching the hand of her husband, Charlie, who was also cleared of attempting to hinder the police investigation.
Several court staff waved goodbye to Brooks, called Murdoch’s “fifth daughter” by British media because she was so close to the media tycoon.
Brooks’s lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw had argued the prosecution failed to produce a “smoking gun” during her 14 days of intense questioning on the stand.
Both Coulson and Brooks were former editors of the News of the World, the 168-year-old tabloid Murdoch closed in July 2011 amid a public outcry over revelations that journalists had hacked into the voicemails of hundreds of people, including murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
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