British police stepped up a high-profile probe on Wednesday into suspicions that a senior tabloid newspaper journalist and two other men intercepted phone calls from staff close to Prince Charles, heir to the throne.
Anti-terrorist officers at London’s metropolitan police are investigating because of the potential security risks to the royal family, and are now also trying to determine whether other public figures may have been bugged.
The three men, who included Clive Goodman, the royal editor for Britain’s best-selling newspaper The News of the World, were arrested in the London area Tuesday on suspicion of “unlawful telephone interceptions”, police said.
They said inquiries began in December last year when three staff members at Clarence House, the prince’s official London residence, contacted them about “alleged repeated security breaches within its telephone network”.
Police would not comment on a BBC report that the staffers were the prince’s communications secretary Paddy Harverson and two others who work with his sons, Princes William and Harry.
One of the two unnamed men, aged 50, has been released on bail, police said. Goodman (48) and a 35-year-old man remained in custody.
The three men were arrested under legislation that allows a punishment of up to two years in jail, a fine or both.
Clarence House declined to comment on the developments.
However, The News of the World, a Sunday newspaper, confirmed that Goodman had been arrested and was being questioned at a police station.
The offices of News International, which owns The News of the World, have also been searched by police. News International is the British subsidiary of media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
ITV television reported that other public figures possible affected include high-profile celebrities and Cabinet-level ministers, but not Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Police did not confirm that report, but said that as a result of the probe, they now believe “public figures beyond the royal household” had had telephone calls intercepted.
The BBC said officers had been working with telephone companies for four months and had uncovered cellphone numbers that may belong to other royal family members, politicians and celebrities.
Mark Cooper, a security expert interviewed by the BBC, said it was possible to call a cellphone that had received voicemail and punch in a code that would allow the caller to access the messages.
Former royal press officer Dickie Arbiter said it was very unlikely Charles would have left voicemail messages on the cellphones of staff.
The chairperson of the Press Complaints Commission, Sir Christopher Meyer, told BBC radio that he has often heard rumours about reporters intercepting calls to obtain information, though he has received “no hard evidence of this”.
The incident is the second blow in a week for The News of the World, which on Friday was found guilty by a court of libelling a Scottish politician and ordered to pay him $380Â 000 in damages.
Charles, his second wife Camilla and his late former wife Princess Diana have suffered in the past from embarrassing public revelations stemming from intercepted phone calls.
In 1993, the public heard an intimate late-night phone call recorded more than three years earlier between the prince, who was married to Diana at the time, and his then-mistress Camilla.
It is said the recording was made by a radio enthusiast using a hi-tech scanning device.
The tape was released just a year after a mystery man, later identified as Diana’s unmarried friend James Gilbey, was allegedly heard calling her by the pet name “Squidgy” and telling her repeatedly: “I love you.”
In that New Year’s Eve 1989 conversation, Diana was also allegedly heard saying that her husband “makes my life torture”. Diana, whose divorce became official in 1996, died in a Paris car crash in 1997.
A retired bank manager, Cyril Reenan, admitted recording the conversation using a radio scanner and selling it to a national newspaper. — AFP