Severin Carrell of the Guardian has confirmed that Andy Coulson, ex-editor of the News of The World and currently the Conservative Government's director of communications has been called as a defence witness.
"Tommy Sheridan named Coulson today in a revised list of defence witnesses who also included Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who was jailed for six months in 2007 for phone-hacking voicemail messages for NoTW"
Having the Tory equivalent of Alistair Campbell being cross examined by Tommy Sheridan should make for, to say the least, an interesting day in court.
11 comments:
Don`t Editor`s have to O.K. all expenses incurred by their editorial staff?. Phone hacking payments don`t come cheap. Why didn`t Coulson question these payments?. Who gave the O.K.?. Accounts dept?, was tax paid on these payments?. I think we should know.
I expect that tommy will be probing these questions in his passionate and inquisitorial manner. We can look forward to mr coulson taking the stand.
I don't imagine phone hacking does cost that much to do, all you have to do is ring up the number and press the right buttons, most people are too naive to have a security code on their voicemail.
However passionate and inquisitorial however, Coulson is not on trial. Tommy's questioning has to be confined to matters relevant to his (Tommy's) case. Can he prove that the story published by the NOTW under Coulson's editorship is substantially untrue?
Will Coulson's appearance shed any light on that?
The phone hacking the reporters got jailed for was cost free IIRC. People forgot to change the PIN to access their voice mail, the reporters called their voice mail access number and keyed in the default PIN.
Andy Coulson may not personally be on trial. But if not in the eyes of the law in most people's minds the news of the is to some extent on trial. There is no getting away from this fact.
"I don't imagine phone hacking does cost that much to do"
So easy they had to employ people to do it for them. I don`t think think some on here get it?. These people don`t work for nothing or for pennies, and then what about the payment to keep their mouths shut.
Some on here have their own agenda. I will stick with reality.
Anon (one of them) the crown have to prove that their charges are perjury are true beyond doubt, its not about proving that the stories are "substantially not true". You are getting confused with the defamation proof where the burden of proof for the defendants (news international) was that their stories were substantially true. This is a criminal trial and has a much higher burden of proof.
Interestingly, in the defamation case, the judge went on to make it easier for News International when he instructed the jury that if they found any part of any story to be true they should find in favour of the newspaper. Seven members of that jury did did not believe one single part of any of the stories. Four more jury members believed at least one part of one story, we will never know what part.
Surely it should be the editor of the Scottish Edition that should be called as it happened under him.
Did this story ever appear in the English edition of the News of the World?
A case of, why go to the monkey when you know it was the organ grinder that done it!...
http://tinyurl.com/38eflhr
Post a Comment