UK PM’s ex-aide Coulson given 18 months
Print Edition
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 yesterday sentenced to 18 months in prison 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 the 46-year-old, who once enjoyed access to the heights of the British establishment.
Four former colleagues at the newspaper received shorter sentences for hacking the cellphone voicemail 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 yesterday that the sentence showed “no one is above the law.”
Murdoch closed the News of the World in July 2011 amid public outrage after it emerged it had illegally accessed the voicemail 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 ... He knew about it, he encouraged it when he should have stopped it,” the judge said.
Former 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 tabloid from 2000-03, 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 2003-07, 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 hearings ahead of the sentencing, Coulson blamed lawyers for failing to tell him phone-hacking was illegal.
But the judge said this was no defense in law.
“The evidence is clear that there was a very great deal of phone hacking while Andy Coulson was editor,” he said.
The prosecution has asked for 750,000 pounds (US$1.3 million) in legal costs from Coulson and the others. He 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.
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