Hacking: Ex NOTW Journalist Pleads Guilty

A former news editor at the News Of The World has pleaded guilty to plotting to hack phones.

Ian Edmondson, 45, entered his plea at the Old Bailey in London.

Edmondson, of Raynes Park, southwest London, admitted conspiring with colleagues and private detective Glenn Mulcaire to intercept the private voicemails of a host of famous people between 3 October 2000 and 9 August 2006.

Edmondson's admission means he is the eighth person to be convicted in connection with the phone-hacking scandal.

The journalist was supposed to go on trial in December last year at the same time as former editors Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks.

However, the trial judge decided he was "unfit" to continue.

During the original eight-month trial, jurors were told how Edmondson had worked as an executive on the newspaper's news desk - described as the "engine room of the newsroom" - since 2005.

The news editor had initially wanted to end Mulcaire's £100,000-a-year contract soon after joining the now defunct NOTW but changed his mind when he realised the private detective's value, the court was told.

Altogether, according to an analysis of detailed notes kept by the private detective, 23.9% of the news desk orders to Mulcaire came from Edmondson including instructions relating to former Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, minor royal Freddie Windsor and former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott.

Edmondson was suspended from the Sunday paper in 2010 after the emergence of three emails that implicated him in the hacking scandal and he was sacked a year later.

The court in the original trial heard how there was a culture of secrecy and competition in the Sunday tabloid newsroom under Coulson, who went on to become David Cameron's head of communications.

Coulson, 46, was found guilty of the hacking plot in July while Mrs Brooks, 46, and retired managing editor Stuart Kuttner, 74, were cleared of any wrong doing.