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UK police: Tabloid lied, hacked for scoops on girl



Photo: AP

January 23, 2012 — LONDON (AP) —
News of the World journalists used phone hacking, harassment and lies to
secure scoops on missing British schoolgirl Milly Dowler, police
reported Monday, detailing a litany of abusive press practices.

In one incident, someone impersonated the teen's
mother and called a potential witness to ask for information about the
13-year-old, who was found dead months later in September 2002. British
police did not specify who made the bogus call.

The new details about the News of the World's
relentless pursuit of information about the Dowler case, revealed in a
letter to lawmakers released Monday, illuminate one of the most sordid
episodes of the British phone hacking saga.

The scandal over illegal practices at the
now-defunct tabloid exploded in July after The Guardian newspaper
reported that the News of the World had intercepted Dowler's voicemail
messages while she was still considered missing.

The revelation that journalists had invaded a
murdered girl's privacy to score scoops horrified Britons and led to a
cascade of lawsuits, resignations, arrests and official inquiries.
Surrey Police Deputy Chief Constable Jerry Kirkby, whose force
investigated the girl's disappearance, said in the letter that the News
of the World freely admitted to police that it had broken into Dowler's
voicemail, saying it had obtained her cell phone number and password
from fellow schoolchildren.

Kirkby also said a potential witness called his
force to complain that a News of the World reporter was harassing him
for information. He said the reporter claimed to be working in "full
cooperation" with police.

Kirkby said the "reporter's assertion that he was
working with the police was untrue." The reporter's name was redacted
from the letter. The most troubling incident outlined in Kirkby's letter
was a pair of phone calls made to a recruitment agency by someone
claiming to be the teenager's mother, Sally Dowler, on April 13, 2002.

At the time, the News of the World wrongly believed
Dowler had run away to find work with the agency and was staking out
the premises with what one employee described as "hordes of reporters."
Dowler family attorney Mark Lewis said in an email that Sally Dowler
never made the call.
"No doubt there will be current investigations as
to who that was," he said. Lewis also asked why Surrey Police did not
act sooner to investigate the deception, saying that "no thought seems
to have been given to the effect on the Dowler family."

In a separate development, British lawmaker Tom
Watson wrote to police asking for an investigation into email hacking at
Rupert Murdoch's The Times of London. In December, Times publisher Tom
Mockridge acknowledged that a former reporter had engaged in computer
hacking while at the venerable title. The Guardian newspaper, citing
unidentified colleagues at The Times, said last week that the reporter
had hacked into the Hotmail account of a well-known anonymous police
blogger in a bid to discover his identity.

The blogger, Detective Richard Horton, sued The
Times in 2009 to stop the paper from exposing him but eventually lost.
Noting that no mention was made of computer hacking at the time, Watson
said "it is almost certain that a judge was misled."

The opposition lawmaker, a dogged opponent of
Murdoch, said he wanted police to investigate whether anyone at The
Times was guilty of perjury or obstruction of justice — allegations
which, if confirmed, could have serious consequences for The Times,
which is more than 225 years old.

News International, responsible both for The Times
and the News of the World, reiterated that the interception of Dowler's
phone was "shocking and unacceptable" and that those who sanctioned or
carried out the hacking should be held accountable for their actions.

Police confirmed that they'd received Watson's letter and said they were in contact with the lawmaker over the allegations.

Източник: http://www.mail.com/int/scitech/news/995186-uk-police-tabloid-lied-hacked-scoops-girl.html#.1258-stage-hero1-2