Sun editor among three hacking probe arrests

British police arrested three people including the royal editor of The Sun yesterday, a source said, in an escalation of the long-running phone hacking scandal.

The arrests and the fact they stemmed from information given to the police by Rupert Murdoch’s company itself is likely to reignite tensions within the media group, just days before parliament gives its verdict on how the cult-ure of illegality came about.

Next week Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, will appear before a judicial inquiry to answer questions over the conduct of the press, which will focus on the close ties between Murdoch, his executives, and the political establishment.

Police made the arrests one day after prosecutors confirmed they had started to examine the police case against four journalists and seven others to establish whether they should be charged with a range of offences.

“This was always going to be an important six weeks in this affair, with the Murdochs and politicians going before the Leveson judicial inquiry, but it will be exacerbated by the arrests and the imminent committee report,” said Steven Barnett, communications professor at the Westminster University.

The three held yesterday were detained at dawn and questioned over inappropriate payments made to police and public officials.

The source familiar with the situation said one of those held was Duncan Larcombe, royal editor and a former defence correspondent at The Sun.

A spokeswoman for News International confirmed that one of those arrested was a Sun journalist but declined to give further details.

Another person arrested on Thursday was described by police as a 42-year-old former member of the armed forces. A woman aged 38 has also been arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office.

Murdoch’s British newspaper arm has been rocked in the last year by allegations that journalists at The Sun’s sister title, the News of the World, had routinely hacked into phones to generate salacious front-page stories.

The police investigation, which forced the closure of the 168-year-old News of the World, has since moved on to The Sun and whether its journalists paid police and public officials for stories.

Police said the three arrests were prompted by information provided by the management standards committee, a small team set up by Murdoch’s News Corp to co-operate closely with the police in a move that has infuriated newspaper staff.

The parliamentary select committee investigated allegations of phone hacking after they first surfaced in 2006 and it has since looked at whether it was misled in its initial inquiry by News International executives who pleaded innocence.

Tom Watson, a member of the committee who has campaigned against Murdoch, said he thought News Corp had become a toxic institution which operated like a shadow state.

— Reuters