James Desborough, an award-winning former reporter at the News of the World, has been arrested by officers investigating the phone-hacking scandal.
Desborough was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to section 1 (1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977, after arriving at a south London police station yesterday at 10.30am. He had arrived by appointment for questioning about criminal activities at the defunct paper.
The allegations are believed to relate to events before Desborough was promoted to be the NoW's Los Angeles-based US editor in April 2009, less than a month after winning a British Press Award for showbusiness reporter of the year.
His move to the US makes his arrest, the 13th made by Operation Weeting, particularly significant. If Desborough was involved in hacking while in Britain, it raises the question of whether he practised those techniques in the US – and if so, whether he was the first and only News of the World journalist in the US to do so.
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