FORMER NEWS International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and her husband have condemned Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service decision to charge them with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, questioning whether it was impartially made.
The couple, along with four others, are alleged to have removed documents and computers from News International’s headquarters after it was alleged last July that News of the World journalists had hacked into the voicemail of murder victim Milly Dowler.
Responding last evening, Ms Brooks and her horse-trainer husband, Charlie Brooks, were clearly furious: “Whilst I have always respected the criminal justice system, you have to question whether this decision has been made on a proper impartial assessment of the evidence,” she said.
“I am baffled by the decision to charge me. However, I cannot express my anger enough that those close to me have unfairly been dragged into this.”
She claimed the case would one day be seen as “an expensive sideshow, and a waste of public money”. Under British law, a conviction can bring with it life imprisonment, though that has not been handed down in memory. Last year a man was jailed for three years for trying to cover up information about a fatal road accident.
Ms Brooks’s former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter; her chauffeur at News International, Paul Edwards; News International’s head of security, Mark Hanna, and Daryl Jorsling, who provided security for Ms Brooks, have also been charged with one count.
Speaking alongside his wife outside the offices of their London lawyers, Charlie Brooks said: “I feel today is an attempt to use me and others as scapegoats, the effect of which is to ratchet up the pressure on my wife, who I believe is the subject of a witch hunt.
“There are 172 police officers, about the equivalent of eight murder squads, working on this; so it doesn’t surprise me that the pressure is on to prosecute, no matter how weak the cases will be.”
He said he was confident that “the lack of evidence against me will be borne out in court”, but “I have grave doubts that my wife will ever get a fair trial, given the volume of biased commentary which she has been subject to.”
The date of the charges covers the days after the Guardian reported that Milly Dowler’s voicemails had been hacked and the days before and after News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch decided to close the News of the World.
The decision to prosecute is separate from the three Metropolitan Police investigations under way since last year into phone and computer-hacking and alleged illegal payments made to police and public officials.
Yesterday’s charges are the first to come in the inquiries, though more than 40 other people remain on police bail pending decisions on whether they will face prosecution for involvement in hacking, or for accepting payments.
The decision of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute was taken after Alison Levitt QC, principal legal adviser to the director of public prosecutions, decided that sufficient evidence existed and that a prosecution was “required in the public interest”.
All six individuals are scheduled to appear at City of London Magistrates’ court on June 13th, followed by a case-management hearing later in the summer. However, the trial is unlikely to take place before early next year.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party has withdrawn House of Commons questions to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt after the head of the Leveson inquiry made clear he would be taking evidence from Mr Hunt’s former special adviser Adam Smith and BSkyB lobbyist Frederic Michel.
The two are central to allegations that Mr Hunt was too favourable to Mr Murdoch’s bid to buy the 61 per cent of BSkyB that News Corp does not own – an attempt scuppered by the hacking scandal fallout.
