Former Rupert Murdoch aide Rebekah Brooks, her husband and four others were charged yesterday with trying to conceal evidence in the first prosecutions to emerge from Britain’s phone hacking scandal.
The charges are a stunning fall from grace for Mrs Brooks, the former chief executive of News International and editor of the News of the World, but are also a political headache for her close friend, Prime Minister David Cameron.
Mrs Brooks, 43, and her former racehorse trainer husband Charlie, 49, said the decision to charge them with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice was “weak and unjust”. The offence carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Senior prosecutor Alison Levitt said Mrs Brooks allegedly hid material including computers and other electronic devices from police, but added that there was “sufficient evidence for there to be a realistic prospect of conviction”.
The others to be charged are Cheryl Carter, 48, Mrs Brooks’s personal assistant; Mark Hanna, head of security at NI; Mrs Brooks’s chauffeur Paul Edwards, 47, who was employed by NI, and Daryl Jorsling, 39, who provided security for Mrs Brooks that was supplied by NI.
Police said they were due to appear at a London magistrates court on June 13.
A seventh person arrested was released without charge.
The charges all relate to early July 2011, a frantic period during which Mr Murdoch closed down the News of the World in disgrace after it emerged that it had hacked the phone of Milly Dowler, a schoolgirl who was murdered.
Mrs Brooks was arrested on charges of phone hacking and bribery days after Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper shut down and subsequently quit News International, the British newspaper wing of Mr Murdoch’s US-based News Corp.
She remains on police bail on those charges. Her career began on the bottom rung of Murdoch’s empire more than two decades ago, but after editing the News of the World from 2000-2003, and later The Sun, she became so close to him that she was dubbed his “fifth daughter”.
Instantly recognisable with her shock of flame-red hair, Mrs Brooks also moved in the highest circles of British politics, and testified to a press ethics inquiry just last week about her close relationship with Cameron.
Mr Cameron and Charlie Brooks were school friends at the elite Eton College and he attended the Brooks’s wedding in 2009. She told the inquiry that Cameron used to text her “LOL”, believing that it meant “lots of love”.