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A summary of the notebook of a private detective jailed for phone hacking will be made public as part of the inquiry into journalistic ethics following the News of the World scandal.
Sir Brian Leveson, who is leading the public inquiry, ruled in a judgment published on Tuesday that a version of the notebook belonging to Glenn Mulcaire, commissioned by the now-defunct tabloid to hack phones, would be made available. Names of celebrities targeted by Mr Mulcaire already in the public domain would be visible but not any personal data, Lord Justice Leveson said. Names of journalists who could be part of a criminal investigation would be given a code and would not be readily identifiable, he said.
About 5,800 people’s names were noted by Mr Mulcaire, the Metropolitan Police said last week, after upwardly revising its previous estimate.
Lord Justice Leveson said on Tuesday that he would call witnesses even if they were suspects in the police’s investigations. His decision will be a blow to Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service, who had both argued that the police should decide whether certain documents should be disclosed by the inquiry, and whether certain witnesses should be called, so as not to prejudice any potential jury trial that could stem from the investigations.
That would have had “the potential seriously to damage both the public perception of the inquiry and its timeliness,” Lord Justice Leveson ruled. “It would also give rise to the very real risk that the inquiry becomes emasculated by legal challenge.”
Any witness called to the inquiry will be able to claim privilege without inferences being drawn, Lord Justice Leveson said. He will make a decision on a case-by-case basis as to whether their identity should be revealed.
The CPS declined to immediately comment.
The Leveson inquiry was set up by David Cameron in July in the wake of public outrage over the hacking of the phone of Milly Dowler, the murdered Surrey schoolgirl. The inquiry is in two parts, the first reporting on media relations with politicians, the public and police, while the second will look at how the scandal unfolded at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World.
Lord Justice Leveson’s decision comes at a sensitive time for News International, former publisher of the newspaper. Last week News Corp, its US parent company, laid bare the financial cost of the scandal, saying a $91m restructuring charge and a $68m hit to its publishing profits in its latest quarter stemmed primarily from its closure of the tabloid in July.
The company on Monday admitted that the tabloid had hired a detective to spy on lawyers of celebrities and other public figures – including the solicitor representing Miss Dowler’s family – bringing civil claims against News International, an action that it described as “deeply inappropriate.”
On Thursday, James Murdoch, News Corp’s deputy chief operating officer, is due to return to a Commons committee to discuss his knowledge of what a barrister told the company in 2008 was “a culture of illegal information access” at the News of the World.
Additional reporting by Helen Warrell and Salamander Davoudi in London
Video on FT.com
Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Leveson-publish-NotW-hacker-xft-4160723979.html
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