David Cameron’s ex- media chief cleared of perjury over phone- hacking

He had been accused of lying under oath
when he appeared at a trial in Glasgow
in 2010 when he told the court he had no
knowledge of illegal activities by his
reporters.
Andy Coulson, British Prime Minister
David Cameron’s one-time media chief,
was acquitted by a Scottish court on
Wednesday of committing perjury by
lying about his knowledge of phone-
hacking at a Rupert Murdoch -owned
tabloid he once edited.
Coulson, who was editor of the now-
defunct News of the World newspaper
from 2003-2007, was jailed last July for
conspiracy to intercept voicemails on
mobile phones after it was revealed
there had been widespread hacking by
journalists to obtain exclusive stories for
his paper.
He had been accused of lying under oath
when he appeared at a trial in Glasgow
in 2010 when he told the court he had no
knowledge of illegal activities by his
reporters.
Coulson was answering questions over a
front-page News of the World story
about a Scottish socialist politician,
Tommy Sheridan, whom the paper
accused of visiting a swingers’ club.
Sheridan won a defamation action
against the paper in 2006 but was found
guilty of perjury at the 2010 trial and
jailed for three years.
On Wednesday, the High Court in
Edinburgh threw out the charge of
perjury against Coulson in relation to
the Sheridan case after the judge ruled
there was no case to answer.
Under Scottish law, a lie is only perjury
if it affects the verdict, and the judge
ruled Coulson’s evidence had not been
relevant in the case against Sheridan so
whether he had told the truth or not did
not matter.
Coulson said afterwards: “ This
prosecution was always wrong. I didn’t
lie. The prosecution in my view was a
gross waste of public money.
“I’m just delighted after four pretty
testing years my family and myself have
finally had a good day .”
Coulson quit the News of the World after
phone-hacking first came to light when
the paper’s royal editor and a private
detective were jailed for accessing the
phones of royal aides. Within months, he
went to work for Cameron but when the
scandal resurfaced in 2011 he resigned
as his communications chief.
Murdoch closed the 168-year-old News of
the World in July that year amid a public
furore that reporters had hacked into a
murdered schoolgirl’s phone.
Before its collapse, Coulson’s perjury
trial was told by convicted former News
of the World journalists that their
former editor was well aware that
hacking was commonplace on the paper.
Coulson, who served 20 weeks behind
bars after last year’s phone-hacking
conviction, could have faced years in
prison if he had been convicted of the
perjury offence.