UK Leader’s Ex-Communications Chief to Face Charges in Phone-Hacking Scandal
Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications chief and Rupert Murdoch’s former British newspaper boss are among eight people who face charges in a phone-hacking inquiry that has shaken the British establishment, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Andy Coulson, who was Cameron’s communications chief from 2007 until January 2011, and Rebekah Brooks, who was courted by a succession of prime ministers including Cameron in her role as Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper chief, would be charged with offenses linked to the hacking, Alison Levitt QC, the principal legal adviser to the director of British Public Prosecutions, said in a statement.
The alleged offenses were committed when both were editor of the News of the World newspaper, the Sunday tabloid that Murdoch was forced to close last July amid public revulsion at the phone-hacking revelations.
Others being charged are senior tabloid journalists Stuart Kuttner, Greg Miskiw, Neville Thurlbeck, James Weatherup and Ian Edmondson.
Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire is also among those being charged.
Levitt said that for the eight people facing charges, she had concluded that “there is sufficient evidence for there to be a realistic prospect of conviction in relation to one or more offenses.”