Category Archives: police

The ‘Pizzagate’ Tapes

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Great blog from a man everyone interested in the hacking trial should follow. @peterjukes gives a blow by blow account of the video evidence being used by the prosecution against Rebekah Brooks, Charlie Brooks and the head of security Mark Hanna. A must for aficionados who follow the inside story of the Murdoch Empire

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The CPS today released video evidence from Count 7 in the phone hacking trial, of CCTV from the London residence of  Rebekah and Charlie Brooks at Thames Quay in Chelsea, for the 17th and 18th of July 2011 – starting the Sunday Brooks was arrested and the Chelsea property searched.

According to testimony from the MD of International Corporate Protection, William Geddes, his personal security operative ended up calling the whole affair ‘Pizzagate’.

About half an hour of video – which showed a static Black Audi in the underground car park –  has been edited out from the raw footage because it wasn’t shown to the jury. The remainder is the subject of evidence, contained in my tweets  from Court 12 at the end Monday January 13th, and much of the testimony today Tuesday January 14th.

I’ve included specific CCTV tweets below, but not related call data.

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Phone Hacking Trial: Potential evidence concealed in “pizza delivery” to Brooks’s flat, jury hears – Martin Hickman

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You could hardly make up make these accusations. First News International executives are shown to be paranoid about being bugged then the husband of Rebekah Brooks is caught on security cameras with a ” disappearing ” laptop and then there is an alleged plan to remove evidence under the guise of a pizza delivery. And these are our top news executives. Their defence is going to be very interesting!

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CCTVDay 39, Part 1: Further CCTV footage of Rebekah and Charlie Brooks was shown to the jury at the phone hacking trial as the Crown made its case that they hid evidence from police. The closed circuit pictures captured the events in the basement car park of the Brooks’s London home on the day Mrs Brooks was arrested at Lewisham police station for suspected phone hacking.

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Caught on Camera: Charlie Brooks and a ” disappearing ” laptop -now you see it, now you don’t

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David Hencke comment: There is a delicious irony in this evidence that top News International executives accused of authorising hacking and payments to officials should be so paranoid  themselves about spying that are continually sweeping their offices and homes for bugs and end up being videoed on a private security camera in an underground car park.

 

By Martin Hickman

Rebekah Brooks’s husband was filmed by closed-circuit cameras going into the basement of an apartment block with an envelope and a laptop – and returning a few seconds later without either.

CCTV pictures of Charlie Brooks were shown to the jury at the phone hacking trial as evidence of an alleged plot by the Brooks’s to hide evidence from detectives investigating hacking at the News International.

The footage was shot at 12.14pm on 17 July 2011, 12 minutes after Mrs Brooks was arrested on suspicion of intercepting voicemails while at the News of the World.

According to the prosecution, Mrs Brooks, Mr Brooks and NI’s head of security, Mark Hanna, plotted together to pervert the course of justice between 14 July and 19 July 2011.

Mark Bryant-Heron, for the prosecution, gave the jury at the Old Bailey a timeline of the events of 17 July.

In the morning, he said, Mrs Brooks and a security guard had travelled by car from Enstone in Gloucestershire to Lewisham police station in London where she was due to be questioned. Another associate of hers followed in a second car.

At 12.02pm, shortly after she arrived at the police station, Mrs Brooks was arrested.

The court was then shown a short burst of CCTV footage from 11.52am showing Mr Brooks and his solicitor Angus McBride arriving at Chelsea Harbour in London where the Brooks’s had a flat.

In further CCTV pictures timed at 12.14pm – 12 minutes after the arrest of his wife – Mr Brooks was seen entering the basement car park of the complex.

After apparently loitering momentarily by a pillar, Mr Brooks walked around the pillar and toward the camera carrying a Jiffy bag and a laptop computer. He then disappeared from view.

A few seconds later, at 12.15pm, Mr Brooks walked back past the camera and towards the pillar empty-handed, without the bag or the laptop.

Closing his remarks for the afternoon, Mr Bryant-Heron said that the jury would see further CCTV footage tomorrow.

Mrs Brooks, Mr Brooks and Mr Hanna deny conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

This post originally appeared on http://hackinginquiry.org website last night.

Historic child sex abuse investigation now looks at an unsolved murder

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The Met Police paedophile unit is now  investigating the sadistic murder of a boy  possibly by one of the country’s most notorious paedophiles Sidney Cooke.

The allegations have surfaced as part of a renewed investigation into sex abuse parties held in the 1980s following the seizure of film  by the Met Police in their investigation into whether there was a  group of VIP paedophiles, including a former Cabinet minister, in the 1980s.

 Details are revealed by my colleague Mark Conrad on the Exaro website this weekend.

 He writes: “Police believe that some of the “sex parties” were organised by Sidney Cooke, the notorious paedophile who led the ring of four who were jailed for killing Jason Swift, a 14-year-old boy, in Hackney, east London after gang raping him in 1984.

In a chilling development, the detectives are investigating whether Cooke was involved in an incident in which a pre-teen boy was strangled to death during a sustained sexual attack at a basement flat in London.

Detectives have interviewed what they believe to be a witness to the murder.”

 Cooke is still serving a life sentence in jail for the sexual abuse of two young brothers in the 1970s and 1980s and is now aged 86, one of the growing numbers of elderly paedophiles in prison following successful police prosecutions.

In a quite separate and bizarre development allegations are being made that the security services and special branch may be involved in monitoring the revival of investigations into paedophile rings in the 1980s. People have turned up at  survivors and witnesses addresses saying they are journalists but leaving no cards or numbers. in the latest development reported in the Sunday People and Exaro News a person turned up at a key witness address saying he was from the Sunday People  They had not sent anyone there.

This is disturbing given the alleged record of the security services and special branch about Cyril Smith – who had been monitored by special branch – but no criminal action was taken against him. It could be that the security services are becoming the insecurity services as a result of these new investigations.

Phone Hacking Trial: Court hears from former NI financial controller and Rebekah Brooks PA

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Here it becomes clear that Rebecca Brooks did get her pa a job as a secretary at the Murdoch owned Perth Sunday Times in Australia. But Cheryl Carter strongly denied it was a reward for removing and destroying files which could have been of use to the police in the hacking inquiry. The chief financial officer of News International UK, Susan Panuccio, responsible for ensuring the paper did not make illegal payments said she was “inexperienced” at doing her job and had never heard of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

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NotebooksDay 36:   The jury yesterday heard that Rebekah Brooks has got a personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, a job at a newspaper in Australia owned by Rupert Murdoch.  Mrs Carter had been due to up a secretarial job at the Sunday Times in Perth when she was arrested in January 2012 on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

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Phone Hacking Trial: Brooks’s PA and the Notebooks – Martin Hickman

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Extraordinary revelation here. It appears that Rebekah Brook’s personal assistant was set to emigrate to Australia for a new job on a Murdoch paper in Perth straight after removing files and notebooks on the instructions of her boss. It is these very files that the prosecution allege are part of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. If the detectives hadn’t arrested her she would have left the country.

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Cheryl CarterDay 35, Part 1:  Rebekah Brooks’s PA, Cheryl Carter, was arrested by detectives days before she was about to board a plane to emigrate to Australia, the phone hacking trial heard today. Police suspected that the move to Australia was a reward for removing Mrs Brooks’s notebooks covering the period when hacking was rife at the News of the World, the jury was told.

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Phone Hacking Trial: Jury hears evidence from News International Archivist on ‘concealing evidence’ charge

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The trial now moves to whether Rebekah Brooks was involved in concealing evidence to prevent the police investigating. Andy Coulson was excused a court appearance as he is not involved in these charges. The court also learnt about Charlie Brooks,Rebecca’s husband buying up surplus News International silverware used to wine and dine the great, the good and the not so good.

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Brooks and CarterDay 34: The jury at the Old Bailey phone hacking trial yesterday heard evidence relating to the allegations of conspiracy to prevert the course of justice.  Prosecution Counsel, Andrew Edis QC, told that jury that for the next two to three weeks they would hear evidence on Counts 6 and 7.

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Phone Hacking Trial: hearing resumes tomorrow after seasonal break

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This important trial which is being largely ignored by sections of the mainstream media resumes tomorrow. I will continue to run blogs with short comments on my site of reports by @martin_hickman and documents from @peterjukes with their agreement.

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Phone-hacking trial defendantsThe trial of Rebekah Brooks, Andrew Coulson and five others will resume tomorrow at 2pm at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Saunders and a jury.  This will be Week 9 of the trial which seems unlikely to conclude before the end of April.

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Media and Law Review of the Year, 2013: Part 2, Phone Hacking, Blagging, Bribing and the Trial

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This is a superb summary of the hacking trial and a reminder of the large number of journos and their sources facing future trials over phone hacking, bribery of officials and officials from former police and prison officers to health staff facing charges of accepting bribes. It also points up the Exaro News revelation of the full Murdoch “tape” secretly recorded when he addressed the arrested journos.

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2013 year in review 2Phone hacking and its close relations blagging and bribing were rarely out of the media law news in 2013.  There were new arrests and charges throughout the year, culminating in an Old Bailey Trial.  This began on 28 October 2013 with eight defendants facing seven charges.

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Phone Hacking Trial: Princes William and Harry, Interviews of Brooks and Coulson – Martin Hickman

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Evidence that the phones of the two Royal Princes -William and Harry – were hacked by Glen Mulcaire was produced at the trial yesterday. This finally scotches denials by the Met Police, who knew since 2006, and the Royal Household that this never happened.

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William Harry KateDay 32: Princes William and Harry were targets of the News of the World’s phone hacking operation, the phone hacking trial heard yesteday.  At the Old Bailey, prosecutor Andrew Edis read out a series of recordings of voicemails left by or for the princes which were recovered from the homes of the News of the World’s private detective, Glen Mulcaire, and its royal editor, Clive Goodman, in 2006.

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