Sun journalists ‘were treated like crime gang’

A senior figure at The Sun yesterday launched a forthright attack on police who arrested five Sun journalists, claiming his colleagues had been treated like “members of an organised crime gang”.

The journalists were among eight people arrested at the weekend over allegations of improper payments to police and public officials.

Trevor Kavanagh, the newspaper’s associate editor, said the police investigation into alleged press malpractice was regarded by many as a “witch-hunt” and suggested that free speech in Britain was under attack.

In a strongly-worded article printed in the tabloid, he argued that those arrested had been released on “draconian” bail terms like those imposed on suspected terrorists.

He wrote: “The Sun is not a ‘swamp’ that needs draining. Nor are those other great News International titles, The Times and The Sunday Times.

“Yet in what would at any other time cause uproar in parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners, its journalists are being treated like members of an organised crime gang.

“They are subjects of the biggest police operation in British criminal history — bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder probe.”

He added: “Instead of being called in for questioning, 30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked.”

The arrests of deputy editor Geoff Webster, picture editor John Edwards, chief reporter John Kay, chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker, and John Sturgis, who is a news editor, sparked speculation that the tabloid would go the same way as the News of the World.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the solicitor representing the family of Milly Dowler, as well as other alleged victims of phone hacking, is taking his battle against Rupert Murdoch to America.

Mark Lewis, one of several lawyers representing clients pursuing claims against the News of the World for phone hacking, is expected to travel to the US within the next few weeks to meet with American lawyers about legal action in the country. He was reported as being in the “advanced stages” of bringing at least one case against Murdoch’s company in the US.

Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News International parent company News Corporation, is expected to fly to London to visit staff this week.