Prosecution opens News of the World phone-hacking trial
Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks is among those on trial
The trial of former News of the World journalists accused of phone hacking has got under way at the Old Bailey.
Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC said the trial concerned other discoveries in the investigation, not just hacking.Ex-News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson are among eight people who deny a range of charges.
The court has heard that three other NoW journalists have also pleaded guilty to conspiring to hack phones.
The trial could last up to six months.
Mr Edis told the jury of nine women and three men that the News of the World had closed because it had been discovered that someone at the newspaper had hacked the phone of a "young murdered girl, Milly Dowler."
He said that phone hacking meant listening to other people's voicemails without their consent, usually by finding the passcode needed to listen to messages left for them by someone else.
Mr Edis said the newspaper had
employed a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, to be involved in phone
hacking in order to find or develop stories that would eventually make
it into the News of the World's pages.
He said public officials, including prison officers and
soldiers, sold information to the News of the World and the Sun, and
that was a crime.The third set of allegations faced by some of the defendants concerned hiding possible evidence - perverting the course of justice, he said.
Mr Edis said Mrs Brooks, Mr Coulson and colleagues Ian Edmondson and Stuart Kuttner were charged with conspiracy to intercept communications by listening to voicemails.
Further charges Mr Coulson and reporter Clive Goodman are alleged to have paid a Buckingham Palace police officer for a copy of the royal household telephone book.
Mr Goodman allegedly asked Mr Coulson to approve a payment to a palace police officer.
Mrs Brooks is alleged to have approved payments to public officials while she was editor of the Sun after 2003.
She also allegedly approved nearly £40,000 of payments for stories from a security-cleared MoD official.
Further charges allege an attempt to cover-up evidence involving Mrs Brooks, her PA Cheryl Carter, husband Charlie Brooks and security chief Mark Hanna.
Mr Edis said Mr Mulcaire pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hack phones in November 2006 and was sentenced for that along with Mr Goodman.
The court heard that Mr Mulcaire had pleaded guilty this year to three counts of conspiracy to hack phones in relation to Milly Dowler and others.
Ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson faces phone hacking and corrupt payment charges
Mr Edis said: "We say we will be able to show that there was phone hacking at the News of the World. That Glenn Mulcaire did it. That Clive Goodman did it. And that Ian Edmonson did it.
"Were they asked as part of the conspiracy, given that they were so senior at the paper? They wanted it to happen because they were in charge of the purse-strings... So you may say that if they didn't stop it, they were part of the conspiracy to carry on."
He told the jury it was "quite a simple issue" - "There was phone hacking - who knew?"
Mr Edis said "there was phone hacking during both periods" when Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson edited the News of the World.
"You will have to decide whether it could happen without the editor knowing," he told the jury.
