LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron’s ex-media chief Andy Coulson listened to a hacked voicemail that revealed two leading actors were having an affair when he was editor of the News of the World, a London court heard yesterday.
Dan Evans, a former reporter and self-confessed prolific phone hacker on the Rupert Murdoch tabloid, said Coulson was one of 10 senior figures on the paper who knew how he intercepted voicemails to generate front page stories.
Coulson, editor of the now defunct tabloid until 2007 and then Cameron’s head of communications up to early 2011, has denied any knowledge of phone-hacking and says he could not be expected to know the source of every story in his paper. Cameron has said he would make a “profound apology” if it turned out his former spokesman had lied.
The 38-year-old Evans has admitted conspiring to intercept voicemails. Yesterday, he took to the stand at London’s Old Bailey court for a second day to detail his methods. He said that on one occasion in October 2005 he had played a hacked recording of a voicemail to his then editor Coulson and other senior figures on the paper which had been left by the actress Sienna Miller for James Bond actor Daniel Craig.
“Andy came over wanting to hear the tape. I played the tape a couple of times and they listened to it,” Evans told the court. “Andy became very animated.”
Reuters
