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    Prosecutors are to charge eight people, including Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, in connection with the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

    Coulson, a former aide to the prime minister and ex-editor of the defunct Sunday tabloid, and Brooks, News International's former chief executive, will face charges in connection with the hacking of the phone of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

    The Crown Prosecution Service announcement means some of Rupert Murdoch's top former aides have been charged with criminal offences.

    Among those charged were Stuart Kuttner, former managing editor of the News of the World, Ian Edmondson, former news editor, Greg Miskiw another former news editor, Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter, James Weatherup, former assistant news editor, and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

    Alison Levitt QC, principal legal adviser to the director of public prosecutions, announced the decision on Tuesday.

    She said the charges related to allegations of phone hacking from 3 October 2000 to August 2006. The CPS will bring 19 charges in all, and say that 600 people were victims, ranging from victims of crime to politicians and celebrities.

    Levitt said: "All, with the exception of Glenn Mulcaire, will be charged with conspiring to intercept communications without lawful authority, from 3 October 2000 to 9 August 2006. The communications in question are the voicemail messages of well-known people and/or those associated with them. There is a schedule containing the names of over 600 people whom the prosecution will say are the victims of this offence."

    The CPS said victims included the former home secretaries David Blunkett and Charles Clarke, Tessa Jowell MP and her husband, David Mills, and Professor John Tulloch, a victim of the 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks on London.

    The allegations that Milly Dowler's phone was hacked led to the News of the World's closure. Charged in relation to that were Coulson, Brooks, Kuttner, Miskiw, Thurlbeck, and Mulcaire.

    In the years following the 2007 conviction of one of its journalists for phone hacking the royal household, News International insisted the practice was limited to one rogue reporter.

    The charging decisions follow a Scotland Yard investigation that began last year, after police had repeatedly said for over a year that there was no need to reopen the investigation.
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