Phone hacking: Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson face charges

Brooks & Coulson

Eight people, including Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson will face a total of 19 charges relating to Britain’s phone-hacking scandal the Crown Prosecution Service has said. Mrs Brooks, who is also a former chief executive of the paper's publisher News International, faces three charges relating to the alleged accessing of phones belonging to Milly and former Fire Brigades Union boss Andrew Gilchrist, CPS legal adviser Alison Levitt QC said in a statement. Mr Coulson, the prime minister's former communications chief, will face four charges linked to accusations of accessing the phone messages of Milly, former Labour home secretaries David Blunkett and Charles Clarke, and Calum Best, the son of the late footballer George Best. Also to be prosecuted is a onetime confidant of media baron Rupert Murdoch and a former senior aide to Prime Minister David Cameron. The eight suspects are accused of illegally tapping into the cellphones of celebrities, politicians and others in the public spotlight, including a teenage kidnap victim who was later found slain. All worked at one time for the News of the World, a tabloid that was notorious for its ruthless pursuit of sensational stories before Murdoch shut it down last year as a result of the hacking scandal. Among those charged is Rebekah Brooks, once a trusted Murdoch lieutenant who headed his British newspapers, including the News of the World, before she resigned in disgrace. The six others charged include former senior journalists at the News of the World and a private investigator hired by the newsweekly to ferret out scoops. Prosecutor Alison Levitt said that cellphones belonging to such celebrities as actors Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jude Law had been illegally broken into. Singer Paul McCartney was another alleged victim, as were high-profile lawmakers. Overall, with the exception of the private investigator, Levitt said those charged Tuesday had conspired to hack into the phones of more than 600 victims over a six-year period, beginning in the fall of 2000. “Prosecution is required in the public interest,” Levitt said. However, in the case of three additional suspects whom she did not identify, there was insufficient evidence to warrant charges. At the request of police, prosecutors are also deferring a decision on whether to charge two other people. Over the past year, Scotland Yard has arrested dozens of people, mostly journalists, in three separate investigations encompassing phone hacking, computer hacking and improper payments to public officials for information. It was a year ago this month that the phone-hacking scandal broke wide open, following the discovery that the News of the World had intercepted messages left on the cellphone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl who was abducted in 2002. Her body was found a short time after her disappearance. Amid public revulsion over the revelation, Murdoch summarily shut down the News of the World, made a public apology and was called to appear for questioning before members of Parliament. Top executives at News International, the British arm of Murdoch’s giant News Corp., resigned, including Brooks, who has denied any knowledge of phone hacking at the News of the World despite being the tabloid’s editor at the time that Milly’s voice mails were intercepted. The scandal shone a light on the cozy relationships between pillars of British public life: the press, politicians and the police. Since last July, the government has launched a judicial inquiry into media ethics and practices that is supposed to produce new proposals for regulating Britain’s unruly media establishments Los Angeles times