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UK Probe in New Phase with Detective’s Arrest
December 09, 2011

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London. A 41-year-old man arrested on Wednesday in connection with the phone hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was identified in British news reports as Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective at the scandal’s center.

The arrest, the 18th since a renewed police operation began in January, suggested that investigators may have reached a crucial phase in a case that has raised disturbing questions about Britain’s freewheeling tabloid press and its relationships with the police, top politicians and intelligence services.

In 2007, Mulcaire was jailed for hacking the phones of the British royal family at the behest of a reporter at Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid. The company insisted that the illegal acts were the work of the investigator and “one rogue reporter.”

But in July, the scandal exploded after The Guardian newspaper disclosed that the tabloid had hacked into the phone of a murdered teenager in 2002, before her body was found. A wave of public outrage prompted three police investigations, a parliamentary panel and a public inquiry centering on accusations that the tabloid sought scoops by intercepting voice mails of newsworthy figures. How much high-level Murdoch executives knew, and when, remains a central question.

Investigators who have examined the 11,000 pages of Mulcaire’s meticulous notes on his work for the tabloid that were seized in 2006 say there is evidence that he had received 2,266 requests for interceptions from 28 journalists. The police have said that as many as 5,795 people may have been targeted between 2001 and 2009.

On Thursday, British police said a 31-year-old woman will face “no further action” stemming from her arrest last month on suspicion of voicemail hacking.

Police did not disclose the woman’s name, but British media identified her as a former reporter for the tabloid that Murdoch shuttered after evidence emerged it had accessed the mobile phone voice mails of celebrities, politicians and crime victims.

NY Times, AP