Royals, politicians, pop stars, film stars and models had phones hacked

THE names dropped into the prosecutor’s opening statement at the Old Bailey would have made a stellar edition of the News of the World.

Royalty, politicians, celebrities: all were allegedly victims of phone hacking carried out by a private investigator employed by the newspaper or by its own executives or reporters.

Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, had his phone hacked by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who has admitted operating on behalf of the News of the World, the court was told.

Recordings of 13 of Windsor’s voice messages were seized when police raided Mulcaire’s office in 2006, said Andrew Edis, QC, for the prosecution.

Mulcaire had also passed on his skills to his paymasters at the tabloid and told them ‘‘how to do it and the necessary numbers’’, the jury was told.

Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Private Secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry, was targeted directly from a telephone line in the News of the World’s offices in 2005.

Clive Goodman, the paper’s royal editor, was jailed the next year after admitting hacking the phones of palace officials.

He is now accused of conspiring with Andy Coulson, the editor at the time, to pay two royal protection officers for copies of the telephone directory containing numbers for members of the royal household.

‘‘The acquisition of telephone books with phone numbers is something of obvious significance because that would have been useful in doing some phone hacking,’’ Edis said.

When police raided Goodman’s home in Addlestone, Surrey, they found 15 royal directories.

Senior members of Tony Blair’s government were also targeted. Lord Prescott, who was the deputy prime minister, and Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, were among the thousands of names meticulously filed by Mulcaire in his office notebooks.

The records of 17 private messages left by David Blunkett, then the work and pensions minister, on the telephone of Sally Anderson, an estate agent half his age, were recovered by police.

‘‘There were lots of

other people whose phones were hacked and whose voicemails were recorded,’’ said Edis as he guided the jury through a hefty file of evidence.

Jude Law was

the

star

of

a eight-month-old boy in her care in Massachusetts, became a victim of hacking after she returned to England to rebuild her life.

‘‘We know she was hacked because her voicemails were found,’’ Edis said.

Sometimes the victims were friends or associates of the celebrities, the court was told.

One woman was allegedly targeted because she was a friend of the model Kate Moss’s brother. Someone who knew the actress Joanna Lumley, the star of the television series The New Avengers and Absolutely Fabulous, had their telephones hacked.

The reasons why some people were selected remains a mystery, with no obvious celebrity connections.

‘‘We have no idea why [the News of the World] was interested in Anna Leonard but Mulcaire obtained her private details to hack her phone,’’ Mr Edis said.

Ian Edmondson, head of news at the newspaper, turned on his own kind with his ‘‘own private hacking’’, it is claimed. In 2006 he is said to have begun hacking the phones of Dennis Rice and Sebastian Hamilton, journalists at the rival Mail on Sunday.