News of the World faces accusations of email hacking
The News of the World may be no more but nefarious allegations continue to come to light, the latest of which, stemming from The Telegraph, alleges that emails from a key witness in a libel trial that the paper fought had been hacked.
Reports in the paper suggest that Fiona McGuire, a former escort girl, had been told by police that her email account had been hacked back in 2005 following claims that she had an affair with Scottish Socialist firebrand Tommy Sheridan.
McGuire told the NoW in 2004 that she’d had an affair with Sheridan and gave evidence in a resulting libel trial brought by the politician.
However McGuire’s lawyer, Steven Heffer, told the Telegraph: “I can confirm that the police have shown me evidence of her personal emails having been apparently intercepted.
“There is evidence that [the emails] were passed around senior people at the News of the World in Scotland. I have seen two or three emails that refer to a journalist in Scotland and an editor in Scotland.”
Andy Coulson, a former special adviser to the Prime Minister, was NoW editor at the time although there is no suggestion he was involved in the illicit activity.
The latest accusations to batter the defunct paper could pose an even bigger challenge to news Corporation than the phone hacking claims – as the Computer Misuse Act expressly bans any unauthorised data access.