LONDON — Police on Thursday arrested another former News of the World executive in connection with the phone hacking scandal at the tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, police and reports said.
Several British media outlets identified the arrested man as Neil Wallis, 60, the former executive editor and deputy editor of the News of the World, who left the paper in 2009.
Scotland Yard would not confirm his identity but said a 60-year-old man was arrested by officers at a residential address in London early on Thursday "on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications".
He was in custody at a west London police station, it said in a statement.
A spokesman at London-based public relations company Outside Organisation, where Wallis is managing director, could not confirm the reports.
"We don't know actually know anything for sure," the spokeswoman told AFP, without elaborating.
Murdoch shut the News of the World last week amid public outrage over allegations that Britain's biggest selling Sunday newspaper hacked the phones of a teenage murder victim and the families of dead soldiers.
Wallis was deputy editor at the 168-year-old title from 2003 to 2007 under editor Andy Coulson. Coulson quit the paper in 2007 after its royal reporter and a private investigator were jailed for hacking mobile phone voicemails.
Wallis went on to become executive editor at the paper and left two years ago.
Before his spell at the News of the World he was editor of The People, another British Sunday tabloid.
Also:Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said: "For the first time in days, it feels like we have a chance to catch our breath and ask, 'what next?'"
"Is it enough to clean up the current mess or are we going to go further?"
Mr Clegg said that the media should be run on the three principles of "freedom, accountability, and plurality".
The Liberal Democrat leader insisted “big questions” needed to be answered about the News Corporation chairman’s fitness to own media outlets in Britain.
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