Phone hacking scandal horrifies U.K. residents

LONDON -- Britain's phone hacking scandal intensified Wednesday as the scope of tabloid intrusion into private voice mails became clearer: Murder victims. Terror victims. Film stars. Sports figures. Politicians. The royal family and entourage.

Almost no one, it seems, was safe from a tabloid determined to beat its rivals, whatever it takes.

The focal point is the News of the World -- now facing a spreading advertising boycott -- and the top executives of its parent companies: Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, and her boss, media potentate Rupert Murdoch.

In his first comment since the scandal broke, Murdoch said in a statement Wednesday that Brooks would continue to lead his British newspaper operation despite calls for her resignation.

The scandal, which has already touched the office of Prime Minister David Cameron, widened as the Metropolitan Police confirmed they were investigating evidence from News International that the tabloid made illegal payments to police officers in its quest for information.

The list of potential victims also grew. Revelations emerged Wednesday that the phones of relatives of people killed in the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks on London's transit system, as well as those tied to two more slain schoolgirls, may also have been targeted.

The true extent of the hacking is not yet clear -- and may not be known for months as inquiries unfold.

A cry for justice

Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David died in the 2005 terrorist attacks, was told by police that he was on a list of potential hacking victims.

Foulkes, who plans to mourn his son on today's sixth anniversary of the attack, said an independent investigation is needed because the police were compromised by accepting payoffs from the tabloid.

"The police are now implicated," he said. "The prime minister must have an independent inquiry and all concerned should be prosecuted."

Foulkes also demanded the resignation of Brooks, the former News of the World editor who is now chief executive of News International, the U.K. newspaper division of Murdoch's News Corp. media empire. News Corp. owns a swath of newspapers, including News of the World, the Sun and the Wall Street Journal.

"She's got to go," Foulkes said. "She cannot say, oops, sorry, we've been caught out. Of course she's responsible for the ethos and practices of her department. Her position is untenable."

Brooks, one of the most powerful women in British journalism, maintains she did not know about the phone hacking. She said she will continue to direct the company.

In Parliament, lawmakers held an emergency debate to call for the prosecution of those responsible for hacking into the phone of Milly Dowler, the 13-year-old murder victim whose case touched off the scandal, and others.

The Dowler case touched a raw national nerve because the paper is accused of hampering the police investigation by deleting some of Milly's phone messages, which gave her parents and police false hope that she was still alive after she disappeared in 2002.

Cameron called for inquiries into the News of the World's behavior as well as into the failure of the original police inquiry to uncover the extent of the hacking. Potential victims have cited the tabloid's payoffs to police as the reason the allegations did not surface earlier.

Many Britons were horrified.

"It's heartless and inconsiderate that they'd do it to victims and family of murder victims," said Danny Wright, 25, of Liverpool.

He said it was wrong to hack into celebrities' phones but far worse to target victims' families "because of what they've been through."

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, said the Dowler case was crucial.

"That's why the case has gotten so big," he said. "If celebrities or politicians have their phones intercepted, that's one thing, but the idea that they were doing this while a little girl was missing and a police inquiry was going on makes it a really gross intrusion."

Satchwell said it has become politically sensitive not only because Cameron's communications chief Andy Coulson was forced to resign because of his earlier stewardship of the tabloid, but because lawmakers opposed to Murdoch's growing media power in Britain want to slow his takeover of other properties.

He said the hacking of Milly's phone was revealed just as government regulators are preparing to decide whether Murdoch can take full control of British Sky Broadcasting.

"You have to ask yourself why that happened right now," he said, cautioning that the public has yet to see clear evidence of illegal phone hacking except for two News of the World employees -- reporter Clive Goodman and investigator Glenn Mulcaire -- who have already served time in jail.

The scandal dominated U.K. media coverage and continued to snowball late Wednesday with a report in the Daily Telegraph claiming that relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq may have had their phones hacked. The newspaper said phone numbers of relatives of the dead were found in Mulcaire's files.

News International said it would be "absolutely appalled and horrified" if there was any truth to the allegations. The Ministry of Defense declined to comment, saying it was a matter for the Metropolitan Police.