Rebekah Brooks tried to hide hacking evidence, prosecutor claims

Rebekah Brooks, the former boss of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm, was involved in an elaborate but botched plan with her husband to hide computers and documents from police investigating phone-hacking, a London court heard yesterday.

Ms Brooks, a former editor of Murdoch's News of the World and Sun newspapers, also arranged with her personal assistant for seven boxes full of her archived notebooks to be spirited away before detectives could get hold of them, prosecutor Andrew Edis told England's Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey.

Conspiracy charge
Ms Brooks was arrested in July 2011 and later charged with conspiracy to illegally intercept voicemails on mobile phones, authorising illegal payments to public officials, and perverting the course of justice by hampering the police inquiry. She denies the charges.

She is on trial with another former editor of the paper, Andy Coulson, who went on to become British prime minister David Cameron’s communications director and denies conspiracy to hack phones and make illegal payments to officials for information.

Also on trial are Ms Brooks’s personal assistant Cheryl Carter, her racehorse trainer husband Charlie, and Mark Hanna, ex-head of security at News International, who all deny charges of perverting the course of justice.

In July 2011, News International, the British arm of News Corp, became engulfed in a “media firestorm” after news that journalists had hacked the phone of a murdered schoolgirl, Mr Edis said.

The furore led to the closure of the 168-year-old News of the World and Ms Brooks's resignation.

The court was told that Mr Hanna had organised an operation named “Blackhawk” to protect Ms Brooks and her husband, both good friends of Mr Cameron, that led to attempts to hide material.

On July 17th, the day Rebekah Brooks was first arrested but before police could begin searches, Mr Edis said her husband had been recorded on closed-circuit TV hiding a bag and a laptop beside bins in the underground car park of their London flat.

These were collected by Mr Hanna and taken away. After numerous contacts during the day, it was arranged for the computer and other material to be returned, Mr Edis said, and later one of Mr Hanna’s team – pretending he was delivering pizzas – put them back behind the bins in a black plastic bag.

But the plan went awry. The following morning, before it could be retrieved, the black bag was found by a cleaner, who gave it to his manager. The manager later called the police.

“This whole exercise was quite complicated and quite risky and liable to go wrong, as it did,” Mr Edis told the jury.

The trial continues. - (Reuters)