{"id":19205,"date":"2013-01-09T15:41:07","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T14:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=19205"},"modified":"2013-01-09T15:41:07","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T14:41:07","slug":"hacking-inquiry-police-were-thrilled-to-meet-celebrities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/media-news\/hacking-inquiry-police-were-thrilled-to-meet-celebrities\/","title":{"rendered":"Hacking-inquiry police \u2018were thrilled to meet celebrities\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yorkshire Post<\/a> |<\/p>\n

Police officers investigating phone hacking viewed the inquiry as \u201ca bit of a jolly\u201d and were excited about meeting celebrities, a senior detective claimed yesterday.<\/p>\n

\n

Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn told Southwark Crown Court that she feared that her colleagues thought the investigation would be \u201ca bit of fun\u201d.<\/p>\n

She is accused of misconduct in public office for allegedly offering information to the\u00a0News of the World<\/em>\u00a0(NoTW) in September 2010, when she was working in counter-terrorism managing the National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit.<\/p>\n

The 53-year-old told jurors she felt resources meant for fighting terrorism should not be diverted.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cI felt very strongly that we shouldn\u2019t be doing hacking. Our function was to prevent terrorist attacks and I was particularly worried that the behaviour of my colleagues was such that they thought it was a bit of a jolly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey thought it was all going to be a bit of fun, getting to travel, getting to see famous people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt sufficiently strongly we should not be diverting resources which are to do with saving people\u2019s lives. It made me really angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a meeting held the day before she called the NoTW, there was \u201cpalpable excitement\u201d about who would get to meet Hollywood actress Sienna Miller, she said.<\/p>\n

There was also some uncertainty over the legal position on phone hacking and whether criminal prosecutions could be brought, the court heard.<\/p>\n

But Casburn did not feel able to speak out against the plans for the phone-hacking investigation, which had been re-opened by then assistant commissioner John Yates, she told the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Yates was a very powerful and influential officer and all the people in the meeting more senior than me were powerful and influential officers,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t believe I could make any difference to the decision-making around using counter-terrorist assets for the phone-hacking inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Casburn admits making the phone call to the NoTW, but denies misconduct, asking for money and offering information that was not already in the public domain.<\/p>\n

Asked about going to the Press, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon for a lot of people to use the Press, for politicians to get a story out, to have something released or a wrongdoing to be exposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in some circumstances it\u2019s right to go to the Press because they do expose wrongdoing and they do expose poor decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trial continues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yorkshire Post | Police officers investigating phone hacking viewed the inquiry as \u201ca bit of a jolly\u201d and were excited about meeting celebrities, a senior detective claimed yesterday. Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn told Southwark Crown Court that she feared that her colleagues thought the investigation would be \u201ca bit of fun\u201d. She is accused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,18,1615],"tags":[55],"class_list":{"0":"post-19205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-media-news","7":"category-latest-news","8":"category-uk-news","9":"tag-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}