London, July 8: A former editor of the News of the World is currently facing arrest over charges of phone hacking, even as reports emerged that Sunday’s edition would be the last of the 168-year-old paper.
Andy Coulson, 43, has been asked to present himself at a police station in Central London. He could also face a perjury investigation over his testimony during the trial of a Scottish MP who was jailed for lying in a defamation case against the News of the World, the Daily Mirror reported.
Coulson is also expected to be quizzed by police over claims that journalists under his watch made secret payments to police officers.
Sources said another former senior journalist will also be arrested.
Coulson quit the daily in January 2007 just weeks before royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for phone hacking.
The News of the World ordered Mulcaire to hack into voicemail messages left on a mobile phone belonging to a murdered teenager, Milly Dowler, in 2002, the Guardian reported.
Mulcaire may also have targeted relatives of British servicemen killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch bought the newspaper in 1969 and made his foray into British journalism.
His son James told the 200 British staff that Sunday’s edition of the paper, which sells 2.6 million copies a week, would be its last.
“The good things the News of the World does… have been sullied by behaviour that was wrong. Indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company,” James Murdoch was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
“The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself,” he said.
–Agencies