#1 Murdoch celeb/Royal hacking/trial/fallout/Coulson guilty and Brooks cleared

[N.B. Forrest]

The new antisemitism is rainbow coloured, and its heterogeneity makes it an especially fearsome foe.

Hundreds of millions - even billions - of people from all over the world HATE YOU, KIKE CUNT.

Europe's governments need to act unreservedly and without delay. A pan-European plan to deal with antisemitism online, as part of a broader package to deal with online racism, is urgently needed. I for one won't be reading the social media posts that are likely to follow this article. I am talking about legislation with teeth.

You should have your rat choppers drawn with shit-caked pliers.

[N.B. Forrest]

We're all beyond sick of these fucking ugly-ass usurper kikes lording it over us & our nations, constantly pointing their hairy fingers & screaming insufferable "demands" to take away our liberties & "stop" us. They've been getting away with it so long, they simply cannot stop now - even though they know it's precisely why we hate them.

So please do keep it up, you filthy scum. You're getting closer to the quicklime pits with every shrill bleat of your nose-shofars.

[Englisc]

Private Eye will be publushing a special report on this as soon as possible.

The verdicts in full are:

Andy Coulson was found guilty of a charge of conspiracy to intercept voicemails
Mrs Brooks was found not guilty of conspiracy to hack voicemails, two counts of conspiracy to pay public officials and two counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice

Former News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner was found not guilty of conspiring to hack voicemails

Cheryl Carter, Charlie Brooks and News International's former head of security Mark Hanna were cleared of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice

BBC News - Hacking trial: Coulson guilty, Brooks cleared of charges

[joefrombradford]

[Bev]

Ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson and its former royal editor Clive Goodman are to face a retrial on a charge of buying royal telephone directories from police officers.

An Old Bailey jury failed to reach a verdict on the charges last week.

Coulson, 46, was found guilty last week of conspiracy to hack phones and faces a maximum of two years in prison.

He is due to be sentenced later this week for plotting to hack phones at the NoW between 2000 and 2006.

Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC said: "The CPS has taken the position to proceed with the retrial."

He also described the list of phone hacking victims as reading "like a Who's Who to Britain for the first five years of the century", adding that "what occurred was the routine invasion of privacy and that has the capacity to do serious harm".

And Justice Saunders agreed with Mr Edis that the public should be told how two years is the maximum term the convicted men can be sentenced to serve in prison, so that public expectations around their sentencing would be "based on what is lawful".
'Utterly corrupted'

Coulson appeared at the Old Bailey as the sentencing process began, and sat in the dock alongside three former colleagues. Former NoW chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, 52, news editor Greg Miskiw, 64, and reporter James Weatherup, 58, have all admitted their part in what the court heard was "systemic misconduct".
(clockwise from top left) Greg Miskiw, Glenn Mulcaire, Neville Thurlbeck. James Weatherup Greg Miskiw, Glenn Mulcaire, Neville Thurlbeck. James Weatherup will be sentenced alongside Andy Coulson

Private detective Glenn Mulcaire also appeared in court, for his part in the hacking plot. Former NoW reporter Dan Evans, who has also admitted phone hacking, will be sentenced separately in late July.

Mr Edis also told the court on Monday that the Crown would make an application for costs against Miskiw, Thurlbeck, Weatherup and Coulson totalling £750,000.

Those four men had "utterly corrupted" the NoW, which "became at the very highest level a criminal enterprise", the court heard.

The court also heard Miskiw was the most heavily implicated in phone hacking, making some 1,500 requests to Mulcaire between 1999 and 2006, even after he had left the News of the World.

In July 2004 he asked Mulcaire to target Spectator publisher Kimberly Quinn because of her involvement with former home secretary David Blunkett.

And he and Thurlbeck were also responsible for instructing Mulcaire over the hacking of voicemails on a mobile phone belonging to murdered Surrey teenager Milly Dowler in 2002.

h ttp://w ww.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28086528

[Bev]

Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson has been jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones.

The 46-year-old, who rose to become director of communications for Prime Minister David Cameron, was found guilty at the Old Bailey last week.

He was one of four ex-journalists at the tabloid to be sentenced, along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Five defendants - including former News International chief Rebekah Brooks - were cleared of all charges last week.

The sentences, all for conspiracy to unlawfully intercept communications, were:

Coulson, 46, of Canterbury - 18 months
Former chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, 52, of Esher, Surrey - six months
Former news editor Greg Miskiw, 64, of Leeds - six months
Former reporter James Weatherup, 58, of Brentwood, Essex - four-month suspended sentence
Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, 43, of Sutton, Surrey - six-month suspended sentence

Mulcaire - who faced four counts - and Weatherup also received 200 hours of community service.

Reacting to the sentences, one hacking victim, whose son died in the 7/7 bombings, said his life had been invaded at his "deepest and darkest point".
Milly Dowler The judge said the News of the World's behaviour in hacking Milly Dowler's phone had been 'unforgiveable'

Coulson was being taken to Belmarsh Prison in south-east London when he left the Old Bailey, the BBC understands.

Meanwhile, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) confirmed it was considering whether to charge eight people in connection with a second investigation into phone hacking.

The Metropolitan Police has passed a file to the CPS under Operation Pinetree, which focuses on the News of the World's features department.

This is separate to the recent hacking trial, which centred on the now-defunct tabloid's news desk.


Asked about the jailing of his former communications chief, the prime minister, who has apologised for hiring him, said: "What it says is that it's right that justice should be done and that no one is above the law - as I've always said."

Downing Street said Mr Cameron had not spoken to Coulson since the guilty verdict.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said the verdict called the prime minister's judgment into question.


The phone hacking sentences - in 45 seconds

The News of the World was closed by its parent company, News International, in July 2011 after the 2002 hacking of Milly Dowler's voicemails emerged.

Coulson had denied the charges against him but was found guilty of plotting to intercept voicemails between 2000 and 2006.

His lawyer had argued his client did not know the hacking on his watch was illegal, but the judge, Mr Justice Saunders, said "ignorance of the law" provided no mitigation.

"The evidence is clear that there was a very great deal of phone hacking while Andy Coulson was editor," the judge said.


The presence of the security guards, three of them, was the first sign that Andy Coulson's freedom was about to be curtailed.

The guards sat in the glass-panelled dock with the defendants, while in front of them were rows of bewigged barristers.

Coulson was next to Mulcaire. The man who hacked for him. The man who the former editor, on oath, insisted he'd not known about until the private investigator's first arrest in 2006. Both stared straight ahead.

And then the judge, Mr Justice Saunders, arrived to deliver the latest chapter in the downfall of Andrew Edward Coulson.

The spin doctor, who once advised a British prime minister on image and presentation, displayed no reaction when sentence was passed, other than to swallow hard and glance at the public gallery.

The tabloid editor who hacked, and who escaped justice once to work in Downing Street, has got his comeuppance.
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Sentencing the five men, Mr Justice Saunders said hacking had picked up "intensely personal" messages, causing "serious distress to the subjects".

He referred to the hacking of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone, saying the News of the World's delay in telling police about voicemails had been "unforgiveable".

Those working on the paper, the judge said, "were using their resources to try to find Milly Dowler".

He added: "The fact that they delayed telling the police of the contents of the voicemail demonstrates that their true motivation was not to act in the best interests of the child but to get credit for finding her and thereby sell the maximum number of newspapers."
Glenn Mulcaire Former private investigator Glenn Mulcaire was 'truly the lucky one', the judge said

The judge said he was in no doubt Coulson had been under "considerable pressure" in the job of editor, and that he "clearly thought it was necessary" to use hacking to maintain the paper's competitive edge.

Coulson had to take the "major share of the blame for the phone hacking at the News of the World", he told the court.

Between 2003 and 2006, the right to privacy "counted for little" at the paper, according to the judge.

Coulson, Miskiw, Thurlbeck and Weatherup were "distinguished journalists" who had no need to resort to hacking to be successful, but their careers are now "irreparably damaged", he said.

Coulson had faced a maximum two-year sentence, but the judge reduced it by six months for good character and because of the time taken in bringing the case to court.

Under sentencing rules, he can expect to be released on licence after nine months. Should he reoffend, he would be recalled to prison.

Handing Mulcaire a suspended sentence, the judge said he had been "truly the lucky one", because his previous jail term had been "too short" due to a flawed police investigation.
Greg Miskiw Former news editor Greg Miskiw was jailed for six months

A spokesman for pressure group Hacked Off, which campaigns for press reform, said the sentences were the "inevitable outcome of a colossal failure of corporate governance within News International that allowed a culture of criminal behaviour to fester for many years."


Mr Miliband said: "I think, once again, it throws up very serious questions about David Cameron's judgement in bringing a criminal into the heart of Downing Street despite repeated warnings."

Journalist Jane Moore, a friend of Coulson who spoke to him ahead of sentencing, said he had told her he would "try to find some positives" out of what was happening, and to "come out of it the other side a stronger person".

But Graham Foulkes, who was hacked after his son was killed in the 7/7 bombings, said he wanted a longer sentence.

"We still can't understand why anyone would think that cheap headlines or a good way to get a story would be to invade somebody's life at the deepest and darkest point of their life," he said.

Meanwhile, Mrs Brooks's solicitor confirmed to the BBC that she would be applying to recover her legal costs following her acquittal on all charges.

Along with Clive Goodman, the paper's former royal editor, Coulson faces a retrial on charges of conspiracy to misconduct in public office after the jury failed to reach a verdict.

The pair are accused of buying royal telephone directories from police officers.

ht tp://ww w.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28160626

[Bev]

A former News of the World news executive has admitted he was involved in phone hacking, 16 months after pleading not guilty to the crime in the Old Bailey.

Ian Edmondson’s about-turn marks the final chapter in the phone-hacking trial that ended in June with the conviction of Andy Coulson and the acquittal of Rebekah Brooks, both former New of the World editors.

Edmondson, 45, spoke only to confirm his name and to say “guilty” when asked to formally enter his plea.

He was charged with conspiring to hack phones between 3 October 2000 and 9 August 2006 together with the paper’s former editor Andy Coulson and with hacker Glen Mulcaire, the paper’s former royal editor Clive Goodman, its former newsdesk executives Greg Miskiw, Neville Thurlbeck and James Weatherup, the paper’s former feature writer Dan Evans, and other persons known and unknown.

Edmondson was one of the original eight defendants at the Old Bailey trial but, for health reasons, was deemed “unfit” to continue on the 29th day of proceedings. He was deemed fit to stand trial in July.

Before he was released from trial, the jury heard how he was one of four news editors for whom convicted hacker Mulcaire worked.

Edmondson, who is now facing the possibility of jail, was bailed and will be sentenced at a date in November.

Edmondson’s barrister Sallie Bennet-Jenkins QC told the court that Mulcaire had frequently “bragged” about hacking and Edmondson was aware that this was one of the tools of his trade when tasking him.

She added, however, that Edmondson had been acting “under direct instructions by senior executives to use Mulcaire”.

Mark Bryant Heron QC, for the prosecution, told the court that Edmondson was not the most prolific tasker of Mulcaire during the six-year phone hacking conspiracy at the paper.

At one stage he even wanted to sack him, telling his bosses that the £2,019 a week for “special investigations” being paid to Mulcaire’s Nine Consultancy “had to stop”.

But, said the prosecutor, once Mulcaire’s previous handler Miskiw – also a former news editor – left the paper, Edmondson became a “frequent” tasker of the private investigator.

Between July 2005 and August 2006 records showed there were 800 callsand texts, or 90 a month Bryant Heron said.

The court also heard for the first time of a tape recording of a conversation between Edmondson and a News of the World colleague. The tape was undated but from its contents it was evidence the conversation took place following the arrest of the royal editor Clive Goodman in 2006 on suspicion of phone hacking.

The colleague said: “But you know what the vital difference is you haven’t done anything yourself or from your number. That is not what Clive’s caught on, he’s fucking done it himself ...”

Edmondson replied: “ Yeah – I’ve done it myself ...”

The prosecution said that Edmondson’s name was on 334 of the 8,000 notes seized from Mulcaire’s premises linking him to the hacking of celebrities, politicians and sportspeople.

In addition to Lord Prescott, former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, and Lord Freddie Windsor, targets linked to Edmondson’s instructions to Mulcaire included Sienna Miller, her friend Archie Keswick and her former boyfriend Jude Law, and George Best’s son Callum Best, the court heard.

He also employed Mulcaire to investigate Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills in May 2006.

The NoW published nine articles about the couple between over one month, said Bryant Heron. “Ian Edmondson wished, unsurprisingly, to get information on the marital break-up. He employed Mulcaire to do so.”

He told the court: “There was an aggressive newsgathering culture. The end justified the means to get results, to get the story, in an extremely competitive market.”

Edmondson worked for the paper in the 1990s, and then rejoined the tabloid’s news desk in 2004, becoming news editor in 2005, a position he held until he was suspended in December 2010 and subsequently dismissed for gross misconduct in January 2011.

He was in charge when Mulcaire and the paper’s royal editor Clive Goodman were arrested in August 2006 on suspicion of hacking.

His suspension four years later came after three emails implicating him in Mulcaire’s hacking came to light. These suggested that hacking was not confined to Goodman, who the company had claimed was operating as a single “rogue reporter” and led to the launch of Operation Weeting, Scotland Yard’s phone-hacking investigation in January 2011.

They contained the mobile and pin numbers for Joan Hammell, a special adviser to Lord Prescott, former culture secretary Tessa Jowell and royal Freddie Windsor.

The jury heard that during Edmondson’s reign on the news desk the paper also hacking rival journalists on the Mail on Sunday in an attempt to discover what they knew about Prescott’s affair with his diary secretary Tracey Temple in a “dog-eat-dog” fight for stories.

After the paper hacked Temple and her ex-husband and got nowhere, the prosecution said that Edmondson then got hold of Hammell’s number and passed it to Mulcaire. Mulcaire went on to get her pin and listened to 45 messages. He then emailed Edmondson telling him: “This is how you can hack the phone so that you too can hear them”, according to emails disclosed during the trial.

“In the dog-eat-dog world of journalism, in this frenzy to get the huge story and to try to get something other than everybody else, that is what you do, we suggest, if you are Ian Edmondson – you hack the competition,” prosecutor Andrew Edis QC told jurors in his opening speech.

One defendant had claimed that hacking was so widespread that Edmondson was even accessing Coulson’s voicemail to find out which stories he favoured.

When Mulcaire’s home was raided by police in 2006, officers discovered a large cache of notes recording who had tasked him to hack phones, including “Ian”.

His decision to plead guilty means that eight of the 10 so far charged and dealt with for phone hacking at the NoW have been convicted or pleaded guilty.

Before the trial had got underway had sought disclosure of internal emails distancing himself from the work of Mulcaire.

He sought the emails to prove that he thought Mulcaire was “inefficient” and “a waste of money” and wanted him sacked and that after he arrived at NoW in November 2004 that he cut down on the cash payments.

h ttp://ww w.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/03/phone-hacking-trial-news-world-ian-edmondson-pleads-guilty