The Times is reporting that five more journalists suspected of involvement in the News of the World phone-hackling scandal will be arrested within days.
The News International-owned title devoted its main front-page story to phone-hacking today for the first time since news broke on Monday night that an investigator working for the News of the World may have hacked the mobile phone messages of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002.
The paper said today that News International is ‘close to identifying who allegedly ordered the hackling of Milly Dowler’s telephone”.
It said that a search of documents had this week provided details of the ‘individual or individuals’involved.
On Monday last week Press Association royal reporter Laura Elston was arrested by police on suspicion of illegally accessing voicemail messages and then released on bail.
The previous Thursday, a 39-year-old woman who had worked as a freelance journalist for the News of the World was also arrested and questioned by officers working as part of Operation Weeting. She has been named as Terenia Taras, a former girlfriend of ex-News of the World journalist Greg Miskiw.
The two women join News of the World assistant news editor James Weatherup, chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and former assistant editor (news) Ian Edmondson on the list of journalists to have been arrested, questioned and released on bail without charge under the Weeting probe.
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