In a post yesterday on the Index on Censorship Blog, Brian Carthcart considers the latest developments in the “News of the World” phone hacking scandal, suggesting that this puts the police under the spotlight, suggesting that the police should be taken off the case and the investigation reopened.  This is based on the consideration of the case advanced by Sienna Miller in the latest civil claim against the “News of the World”.

In his post Professor Cathcart argues that

“The case presented by Sienna Miller in her action against the News of the World dramatically raises the stakes in the phone-hacking affair. The paper and its former editor, Andy Coulson, look more exposed than ever, but even more importantly the Metropolitan Police has moved to the very centre of the scandal”.

He refers to her Particulars of Claim, as reported by The Guardian, pointing out that despite the impressive amount of evidence apparently found in the possession of Mr Mulcaire

“No detective saw fit to phone or visit Miller either to alert her that she might have been a victim of a campaign of illegal intrusion or to inquire whether she had anything to say … But there was no investigation of Miller’s case at all. The Met contented themselves with a prosecution which implicated only one reporter at the News of the World — Clive Goodman — and left the rest of the organisation untouched. The offices of the paper for which Mulcaire did his hacking were never raided. No journalist other than Goodman was even questioned.

Professor Cathcart points out that

“When the Commons select committee on the media looked at all this last year (and, to declare an interest, I was an adviser) it criticised in blunt terms the Met’s failure to even question three News of the World journalists — Neville Thurlbeck, Greg Miskiw and Ross Hindley aka Hall — in connection with a very simple paper trail of phone hacking evidence“.

The full post can be read on the Index on Censorship Blog, along with earlier posts by Professor Cathcart on this issue which can be found here, here and here