Another defendant too ill to continue giving evidence in the hacking trial.
Day 83
: Clive Goodman, former royal editor of the News of the World, is still too unwell to continue giving evidence at the phone hacking trial, the jury was told today.
Mr Goodman, who has recently had a heart operation, denies making payments to police officers to obtain copies of three royal phone directories found at his home seven years ago.
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Just when Parliament’s IT boss had promised that their new computer system was up and running again and ready to expand, guess what happens.
It takes just 90 minutes for another crash with a hasty call to IT experts to convene to sort out why so many MPs and peers offices still can’t access the internet.
Full details of the story are on the Exaro News website and in Computer Weekly .They come from the latest leaks from inside Parliament – one general memo to all staff telling them everything is working well and another to the IT team saying everything has started to go wrong.
At this rate it looks as though Parliament with its thousands of internal subscribers is going to join other institutions in Whitehall and the NHS with a system plagued with problems.
A total denial from Mark Hanna, NI’s security chief, that he was part of a plot to shield Rebekah Brooks from the police investigation into phone hacking. He also says he has never heard of President Nixon’s Watergate. Really! Where’s this man been living all this time.
Day 83:
News International’s head of security today denied being part of a plot to shield Rebekah Brooks and the newspaper group from the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into phone hacking.
Mark Hanna, suspended on full pay by the newspaper company when he was charged in May 2012, said he would not commit a crime for anyone.
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Revealed by the defence; The hiding of the bags is all about keeping Charlie Brooks ‘ lesbian DVDs away from prying police eyes and not embarrassing Rebekah. Nothing about phone hacking!
Day 82, Part 1:
A security chief for Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group agreed to keep from the police a stash of pornography belonging to the husband of former chief executive Rebekah Brooks, the phone hacking trial heard today.
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Hanna’s defence: I didn’t know Rebekah Brooks had been arrested when I removed the bags. Indeed I can’t remember who told me and when!
Day 82:
News International’s head of security did not know Rebekah Brooks had been arrested on the day until hours after he allegedly hid evidence from detectives, he told the phone hacking trial today.
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Here Mark Hanna head of security at NI flatly denies claims by another witness that he destroyed incriminating documents to protect News International.
Day 81, Part 2:
News International’s head of security today denied burning documents that incriminated the company in his back garden.
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Charlie Brooks gets a grilling for being silent during his first police interview.
Day 81:
Charlie Brooks today rejected claims that he stayed silent during a police interview so that he could “invent” a story later to explain away why he hid evidence from detectives.
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Too drunk to realise his bags with lesbian DVDs had not arrived- Charlie Brooks explanation after sharing six bottles of plonk
Day 80, Part 2:
Charlie Brooks was “too sloppy” after drinking red wine to notice that the bags he had hidden from police had not been returned to him as planned, the Old Bailey heard today.
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So now we know why the prosecution released details of Charlie Brooks’ collection of lesbian porn DVDs- they are part of his defence case!
Day 80:
Charlie Brooks told the phone hacking trial today that he hid his bags from police because he was worried that the discovery of his pornography collection could lead to a “Jacqui Smith moment.”
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Over the weekend my intrepid colleague, Mark Conrad, broke a very detailed story on Exaro News and in The People, about a pornographic child abuse video seized by the customs way back in 1982. You can read the full story on both sites.
The customs officer, Maganlal Solanki, then handed over the tape to senior managers at Customs and Excise. They took over the case. took no further action, and are understood to have passed the video cassette to the Security Service, MI5. No one was prosecuted.
The officer says a prominent Tory Cabinet minister was on that tape but he is still too scared to discuss what he is doing and there still seems an attempt to gag him.
Again like the scandal at Elm Guest House, the failure to pursue paedophile Sir Cyril Smith, and what is being revealed about the scale of sexual abuse in a Durham detention centre, the police and the security services and special branch( who certainly knew about Smith) have questions to answer.
Why is it taking 40 years for the police to review cases ? It begs the question of whether it will be covered up yet again. Or have people destroyed all the evidence?
Given such a video would have provided prima facie evidence for any prosecution why was nothing done about it and why was the person who brought it into Britain at Dover allowed to go on his way?
The more we look into this murky area, the more unanswered questions there are and the nastier the cover up.
Westminster Confidential 