Europe

Europe

UK police aware of Milly Dowler hacking

24 January 2012 21:26 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA.Surrey Police have come under fresh pressure after it was revealed that the force knew the News of the World reporters hacked into Milly Dowler’s phone, APA reports quoting Press TV.

The defunct Sunday tabloid informed the police only a month after Dowler’s disappearance that its reporters had hacked into the voicemail of the 13-year-old schoolgirl. The reporters said to the police that they got her mobile number and PIN details from her school friends.

Despite the fact that the reports admitted their illegal activity in April 2002, the police took no action against them, and shockingly invited two of the reporters to a private meeting to discuss the case.

The appalling news over police’s failure to act properly on phone hacking was mentioned in a letter sent by the police force to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

The committee chairman, John Whittingdale, stressed that the letter showed that several journalists of the Rupert Murdoch’s paper were engaged in hacking Dowler’s phone.

MPs considered the disclosure as â€œsickeningâ€ and said that the police would face â€œserious questionsâ€ over the information they had. Commons Home Affairs Committee chairman Keith Vaz said, â€œHad they acted in 2002 ... it may have prevented the culture of hacking becoming endemic at News of the World.â€

Tory MP Damian Collins said that the new revelation exposed the black hearts of those responsible for perpetrating and covering up this scandal.

Dowler was abducted on her way back home from school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on March 2002. Six months later, her body was found in the River Thames.

Her murder had played an important role in the phone hacking scandal at Murdoch’s UK based newspaper.