Wiretapping scandal surrounding British newspaper: Scotland Yard wants to contact victims
In the wiretapping scandal involving the British tabloid *News of the World*, Scotland Yard plans to contact several thousand potential victims.
According to SDA, the police announced on Wednesday that they wanted to speak to all the people whose details were found in the confiscated documents. The investigators want to examine whether journalists from the News of the World systematically spied on politicians and celebrities in order to secure headline-grabbing exclusive reports.
The scandal surrounding the newspaper first hit the headlines in the summer of 2006, when Prince Charles' office lodged a complaint about a possible eavesdropping attack on the heir to the British throne. The then News of the World head of reporting on the royal family, Clive Goodman, was arrested and sentenced to four months in prison a year later. At the time, Goodman emphasized that he had acted on his own initiative and without the knowledge of other editors. Andy Coulson, then editor-in-chief of the paper, which belonged to Rupert Murdoch's group, resigned, although he always emphasized that he had known nothing about the wiretapping affair. Coulson later joined Prime Minister David Cameron as head of communications. In the face of public pressure due to the reopened investigation, he resigned from this post at the end of January. (SDA)
