Phone hacking: even more News International emails deleted

It had been thought the Murdoch group had requested that emails be deleted on nine occasions, but a company hired to delete the messages yesterday said that it had done so on four more occasions.
The extra deletions, requested between December 2009 and June this year, included emails from the inbox of a user who had not accessed his account for eight years.
The deletions to the eight-year-old account were carried out a few months after the phone hacking scandal reignited amid reports that hacking at the News of the World was more prevalent than previously thought.
Some deletion requests related to two personal folders and a tranche of “bad or corrupted” files.
Many of the other deletions, performed by HCL Technologies, were carried out before News International ordered its staff in an internal memo to stop deleting emails earlier this year.
Keith Vaz, a Labour MP and chairman of the home affairs select committee, said the disclosures were “concerning” and that the committee would investigate the removal of any information that “pointed to the prevalence of phone hacking” at News International.
Nine previous requests to delete emails – between April last year and July this year – were already identified before lawyers for Delhi-based HCL Technologies wrote to Mr Vaz yesterday with the new information.
Mr Vaz said: “The request for deletion of folders and emails by News International is concerning.
“The committee will continue to investigate the issue of phone hacking and the removal of any information that could possibly point to the prevalence of phone hacking by those working in the organisation.”
The new letter to Mr Vaz shows that on Dec 9 2009, News International requested deletion of emails from the inbox of a user who had not accessed his email account for eight years.
On Feb 24 last year, the company asked for the deletion of personal folders under the name “Gabriel/uploaded”. A personal folder was also removed on Sept 28 last year.
The most recent request came on June 29 this year, when the company asked for deletion of “certain bad or corrupted files”.
HCL, which provides services under contract to News International, informed the committee last month that it was aware of the deletion of hundreds of thousands of emails on nine occasions between April 2010 and July 2011, but said it did not know of anything “untoward” behind the requests.
John-Paul Ford Rojas, Andrew Hough and Mark Hughes @'The Telegraph'