Phone hacking: police have more than 100 recordings

Lawyers for celebrities suing News of the World claim tapes could contain voicemails recorded by investigator Glenn Mulcaire The Metropolitan police have more than 100 recordings that were made by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World, it emerged in the high court today. Lawyers acting for several of the public figures who are suing the paper’s owner, News Group Newspapers, claim a substantial number of the tapes and MiniDiscs seized by Scotland Yard five years ago are likely to contain voicemail messages the private investigator intercepted illegally. They were in court this morning to seek an order which would force the Met to hand over all the material it seized in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire’s home as part of an investigation which lead to his arrest and imprisonment. That material also includes 11,000 pages of detailed notes which are likely to list the people Mulcaire targeted. Hugh Tomlinson QC, one of the barristers representing the phone-hacking victims, said the claimants needed to see that information to establish when Mulcaire started to intercept their messages and the “modus operandi” he used to do so. Tomlinson said the News of the World had not disclosed documents which cast light on the paper’s use of Mulcaire. “The people we say are the wrongdoers have little or no documents of a contemporaneous or relevant nature for whatever reason,” he added. The Met is resisting that request because Mulcaire’s records contain personal information belonging to scores of well-known people who have no connection with the current cases. Redacting their names could take many months, according to the police. The claimants want to see the information unredacted, although it would only be seen by the parties in the case and would not be made publicly available. Football agent Sky Andrew, Labour MP Chris Bryant and former Sky Sports commentator Andy Gray are amongst those suing Mulcaire and the News of the World for breach of privacy. The court heard the Met has divided the material seized from Mulcaire into 148 categories. Tomlinson said it was necessary to see it in order to see “when [Mulcaire's activity] began, how it operated and when it ended”. He said the content of the messages was not important but the dates on which they were made could help claimants demonstrate how widespread the investigator’s activities were. That could effect the amount of damages given. The court also heard that News Group had conceded an attempt to access Andrew’s voicemail had been made 33 times between February 2005 and August 2006 but that 19 of those attempts were unsuccessful and a further four were likely to have been failed attempts. No stories were published as a result. Mr Justice Vos said the court was not conducting a public inquiry and pointed out claimants already had the pages from Mulcaire’s notebooks which related directly to them. He is likely to decide whether to grant the order late this on Monday or Tuesday. •

Posted by on June 20, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.