UK PM’s ex-aide faces retrial in hacking case

Andy Coulson, a former top aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron, will face a retrial on some of the charges in his phone-hacking tribulation, prosecutors have verbalized.

Coulson, a former editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World tabloid, will be endeavored again on charges of conspiring to commit malfeasance in a public office by paying a police officer for royal telephone directories, Al Jazeera reports.

Jurors at London’s Old Bailey court last week convicted him of one charge of illicitly accessing voicemails but failed to reach a verdict on other charges.

Coulson, 46, has yet to be sentenced but the maximum penalty for phone hacking is two years in confinement.

His co-defendant Rebekah Brooks, another former News of the World editor who went on to head the British arm of Murdoch’s operation, was cleared of all charges.

Coulson appeared in court on Monday in a preparatory aurally perceiving ahead of sentencing on Friday with five others who were additionally convicted or pleaded guilty in the case.

The list of victims of News of the World phone hacking “read like a Who’s Who of Britain,” prosecutor Andrew Edis told the court.

The newspaper “became at the highest caliber a malefactor enterprise”, he integrated.

Those affected included the then Kate Middleton, who is now espoused to Prince William, James Bond star Daniel Craig and actor Jude Law.