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Milly Dowler

Posts Tagged ‘Milly Dowler’

Eight who ‘killed’ the News of The World charged over Milly Dowler hacking

GOTCHA! Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson have been charged in relation to the alleged illegal hacking of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s mobile phone messages. Both have enjoyed close relationship with David Cameron, the Prime Minister.

Also charged are: Glenn Mulcaire, Stuart Kuttner, Greg Miskiw, Ian Edmondson, Neville Thurlbeck and James Weatherup.

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Posted: 24th, July 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)


Kelvin McKenzie V Nick Davies: Sun’s Hillsborough Hypocrite Slams Guardian’s Milly Dowler Error

FORMER Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie is upset that The Guardian’s Nick Davies might not have been right when he stated that the News Of The World had deleted messages from Milly Dowler’s phone – the one it hacked.

MacKenzie write in The Spectator:

Welcome to the world of journalism, Nick Davies. So the cops in Surrey told you the story was true — or so you claim. The cops at the Yard told you it was true — or so you claim. Every aching bone in your reporter’s anti-Murdoch body told you it was true. But there was a problem — as we all now know today. The Milly Dowler story that led The Guardian on that fateful day back in July was untrue: there is no evidence to show that the News of the World deleted Milly’s voicemails.

Biased reporting! Is that what McKenzie is accusing Davies of?

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Posted: 15th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)


Who Gave The NoTW Journalist Milly Dowler’s Pin Number And Why Did The Paper Then Hire Glenn Mulcaire?

NICK Davies writes on the Milly Dowler phone hacking crime:

A week ago, I discovered that the police had found new evidence about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone – lots of it.

Can we trust the police? (image: the NoTW’s man at Scotland Yard, Neil Wallis – “I’ve never heard of a policeman, a civil servant or a lawyer wanting me to pay them for information“.)

In London, Scotland Yard had finally gained access to 300m emails on News International’s servers. In Surrey, officers had retrieved all the logs and records from the inquiry that they ran after the 13-year-old schoolgirl was abducted in March 2002.

All the logs they retrieved… No all the logs.

Happily for both police forces, this confirmed almost everything they had previously discovered. The News of the World had indeed hired a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, to hack into the voicemail of the missing girl; he had succeeded; reporters had listened to her messages; Surrey police had known this at the time and taken no action; some messages were deleted; as a result the Dowlers were given false hope that Milly was still alive.

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Posted: 12th, December 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (4)


Leveson Inquiry: Hugh Grant Bleat, Milly Dowler’s Parents Suffer And Mark Lewis Asks The Key Question

MILLY Dowling’s parents and Hugh Grant have been giving testimony at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards. The news is on the front pages of the:

Daily Star: “Day We Thought Milly Was Alive – Parents of missing schoolgirl reveal phone-hacking torment”
Daily Mirror: “After desperately praying for their missing daughter Milly, her mum finally got a breakthrough that convinced her she was safe. She turned to husband Bob and exclaimed ‘She Is Alive!”‘
Independent: “She picked up her voicemails, Bob. She is alive!”
Daily Telegraph: “‘Bob, she’s alive.’mother’s false hope after Milly’s phone hacked”

Other papers focus on the celebrity. The tabloid’s winning mantra ‘If it bleeds it leads’ is overshot by the lust for celebrity news.

The Times: “A celebrity’s story: Grant accuses Mail on Sunday of phone hacking”

The Guardian: “Grant’s stand: ‘If these are straight balls I’d hate to see your googlies’”

Hugh Grant may have been a victim of the phone hackers, but does anyone really sympathise with the rich star? We are more interested in Grant’s sex life than his testimony? If the actor revealed a titbit of news on his private life, that would take precedence over his words on press standards. Grant’s story lacks all the pain of the Dowlings experiences at the hands of the News of The World’s spooks. Their daughter, Milly Dowling, was the victim of a crime. The paper interfered with an ongoing investigation – an investigation carried out in climate of press and police collusion. Why was Dowling spied on? Why did the police not know – and if they did know, why did they not stop it? Who trained the tabloid spies?

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Posted: 22nd, November 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)


Amelia Hill Will Beat The Corrupt Metropolitan Police And The Civil Servants: Remember Sally Murrer

WHO grassed up the police? Who told the Guardian’s reporters Amelia Hill and Nick Davies that the Metropolitan Police were up to their wallets  in dealings with News International and other tabloids? The Met knew Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked. But they never told. They made no arrests. Scotland Yard sat on the news and counted the cash.

And if The Yard knew, what civil servants also knew? The mandarins in Whitehall with their gilded pensions are not immune in this story of greed and lies.

Now the Metropolitan Police are using the Terror Acts to make the Guardian tell all. This is shameful. The police have lost their way. Their case may well be thrown out by the High Court’s Judges …it depends on the lottery of judge selection. Sir Michael George Tugendhat would be the one The Guardian briefs will be hoping for.

The police Operation Weeting investigation into phone hacking is soiled by their own duplicity.

Amelia Hill must be helped. Article 10 of the Human Rights Act says Hall does not need to reveal her sources. She is exercising her freedom of expression. Her news is not  a matter of national security. Also, she has not paid for the information. She has not handed over cash to, say, a policemen. No crime has been committed.

Readers may not recall the name Sally Murrer. But the police should.

In 2008, Murrer, a part-time reporter on the Milton Keynes Citizen newspaper, was booked to appear in the dock Kingston Crown Court. Her apparent crime was to have received information from Thames Valley police detective sergeant, Mark Kearney.

The police pursued her with relish. They put her in a cell, strip searched her and subjected her to interrogation. She said:

“I just lost my ability to think coherently. My brain went to cotton wool.”

She was charged with three counts of obtaining police information illegally and aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office. She pleaded not guilty. Police had made secret recordings of her talking to Kearney.

And then judge Richard Southwell stepped in. He said that under European laws any information gathered by the police using the bug should be excluded. The rights of journalists and their sources was more important. The journalists’ rights to freedom of expression were protected from interference by the state. Murrer did not win. She just did not lose her liberty. But the police made her suffer. Said she:

“This is a victory, not simply for me, but for all journalists. My legal team have been absolutely superb and they have fought for all of us. It’s been a very long, horrible, nasty and vindictive case and we are all exhausted. We have done all emotions over the last 19 months, now it’s just about survival.”

Interestingly the case also featured a private detective – yep, like Glenn Mulcaire: former police officer Derek Webb, 53, from Hertfordshire, was charged with five offences of aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office. He denied them all. He too was cleared. His clients, reportedly, have included the News of the World.

Murrer’s solicitor, Louis Charalambous of Simons Muirhead and Burton, told media:

“Sally Murrer should never have been prosecuted. The safeguards enshrined in law for the protection of journalists have been trampled upon by Thames Valley Police – both at the outset and when they chose to bug Sally’s conversations under a warrant that failed to mention that she was a journalist and later when she was arrested and brought to a police station, where, following a strip search and a night in the cells, she faced a gruelling interrogation – while her home and office were searched, and all of her notebooks seized.

“Had the case against Sally gone ahead, it would have signalled a lurch towards a police state, a situation which is abhorrent in the minds of right thinking people.”

Jeremy Dear, the NUJ general secretary, added:

“This is a major victory, not just for Sally but for all journalists. This case was yet another example of members of the police force believing they were above the law, able to trample over well-established journalistic rights and freedoms. Let’s be clear, this was an attempt to make a criminal out of a journalist for receiving information that the state didn’t want to get out. It was a misguided prosecution that sought to punish Sally for simply doing her job.

“This judgment sends a clear message to the authorities: they must recognise the importance of free and open journalism. Hard questions must now be asked of the police and CPS as to why these costly proceedings were allowed to get so far.”

Thames Valley police replied:

“The leaking of sensitive information is a serious matter which can jeopardise police investigations, put officers and members of the public at risk and lead to criminal and misconduct charges. The public has a right to expect that officers and police staff who have access to sensitive information can be trusted to handle the material appropriately.”

If the Guardian had not shown the highest degrees of quality investigative journalism there would be no Operation Weeting. What act of Terror has been committed to allow an in-line operation Superintendent WoodenTop to cudgel a journalist with a bizarre interpretation of the disparate 4 and 5 sections of the Terror Act?

The Guardian’s sister organ, the Observor, Leader is worth a glance.

It concludes.
“The issues beyond this extraordinary Yard move couldn’t be starker. Journalists have a duty to defend their sources. The Human Rights Act (and Strasbourg beyond it) makes that clear. The use of the Official Secrets Act, which lacks any public interest defence, is imaginative going on ludicrous; just as its prospective use against police officers on the Weeting team is misjudged. In effect, Scotland Yard, which muffed the scandal first time round, appears bent on muffing the task one more time in a welter of hyperactive zeal.

“At least there are several more hurdles this weird initiative must yet clear before its catches fire: an Old Bailey hearing on Friday, decisions from the attorney general and Crown Prosecution Service further down the line. But even at first glance, commissioner Hogan-Howe must see the quicksands he’s stumbling into, pursuing newspaper sources where the public isn’t just interested, but incensed. Tinker Tailor Soldier and Plainly Intelligent Copper? Let us hope so, for everyone’s sake – including the Yard’s.”

Given that Hill and the Guardian never hacked a phone, the sight of the police harassing she and her innocent newspaper is revolting.

The Metropolitan Police may now be planting its size 14 flat feet on another crumbling cliff edge and UK Premier David Cameron teeters on the brink of the chasm of ridicule along with the Plods.

There could be a gentle irony in it all, an unelected Premier Cameron being dragged down by the unrepresentative Met. .. and all the while the advising Civil Servants twitch the odd lip and shuffle folders in readiness to control the new leader. Same Old, Same Old.

Meanwhile, sensitive, caring and sharing, police install CCTV in Whitehall’s office corridors in a bid to plug the leaks.

Posted: 17th, September 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)


Murdoch’s News Of The World ‘Hacked’ Milly Dowler’s Phone: Rebecca Brooks Starts Planning For Maternity Leave?

THE allegation is that Glenn Mulcaire, an investigator working for the News of the World allegedly, hacked into the mobile phone of Milly Dowler, the girl murdered by Levi Bellfield.

It is said that while the hunt for Milly was on, Mulcaire intercepted messages left by relatives and that some of these message were deleted when the message box became full. It is alleged that this made room for new messages.

So. One day a caller might have been told Milly’s message box was full. The next day they would have been allowed to leave a message.

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Posted: 4th, July 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (8)


Levi Bellfield Murdered Milly Dowler: The Case In Photos

LEVI Bellfield was found guilty today of murdering schoolgirl Milly Dowler. An Old Bailey jury found Bellfield guilty of abducting and murdering the 13-year-old after she walked past the killer’s home. The story in photos:

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A home made poster in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, asking for information regarding the missing Surrey teenager Amanda Dowler. Amanda, 13, was last seen walking home from Heathside School, Weybridge.

Posted: 23rd, June 2011 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)


Levi Bellfield Denies Murdering Amanda Dowler

TO prove that some cases do get closure, the Old Bailey calls Levi Bellfield to the dock, where he is accused of murdering schoolgirl Milly Dowler (aka Amanda Dowler) nine years ago.

The 13-year-old was killed. On March 21, 2002, she was last seen alive by anyone other than her killer walking home from school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Six months later, her decomposing body was found in Yateley Heath Woods, Hampshire.

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Posted: 10th, May 2011 | In: Reviews | Comment


Milly Dowler, Levi Bellfield And The Link To Madeleine McCann

MADELEINE McCann – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: MILLY Dowler, nee Amanda Dowler, went missing on March 21, 2002 in Walton-upon-Thames. On 18 September 2002, Milly Dowler’s remains were found by mushroom pickers on Yateley Heath in Hampshire.

Levi Bellfield will face trial over Milly’s murder. But what’s this. In the midst of a story on Milly Dowler, Madeleine McCann’s name appears. Crime reporter Richard Edwards tells Telegraph readers:

Officers initially treated it as a missing persons inquiry rather than a possible abduction – a dilemma highlighted again years later by the slow Portuguese response to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, which was also assumed to be innocent at first.

Er, no it wasn’t From the off the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was a voracious media feeding frenzy, which attacked the parents first and then went for Robert Murat and pretty much anyone else it painted a bity iffy.

Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007. On the morning of the 4th, the Daily Mail wrote:

The disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann has echoes of the tragic case of Ben Needham, who went missing in Greece in 1991.

Portuguese police have identified a suspect over the kidnapping of British toddler Madeleine McCann, who was snatched from a holiday appartment on Thursday night.

Milly Dowling may soon rest in peace. Madeleine McCann remains the media’s benchmark for missing children, Madeleine McCann is missing…

Having An E-fit Over Madeleine McCann

Spotter: Bat E Bird

Posted: 30th, March 2010 | In: Madeleine McCann | Comments (22)