Dowler solicitor: News Int acting “like Soviet Union… you think the KGB are following you”

The solicitor of Milly Dowler’s family, Mark Lewis, has accused Rupert Murdoch’s News International of behaving “like the former Soviet Union”, and that being snooped upon by the discredited Murdoch empire left him feeling like “the KGB are somehow following you”.

He told Victoria Derbyshire on Radio Five this morning:

“It wasn’t just tracking and videoing that contained standard reports in terms of land registry searches, credit searches, etc, things that are ordinarily available, but they had gone that much further into checking where I lived and looking at my house and looking at my children…

“It’s staggering actually, and it’s very upsetting to find that out that they could even think of doing that, it was just wrong for them to do that.

“The idea of going against the lawyer is bad enough but to go against the lawyer’s family in a case is third world, it’s like the former Soviet Union that you think the KGB are somehow following you cos you dare to take on an organisation.”

Adding:

“It’s incredible, it’s staggering that somebody should be looking effectively at my private life and at Charlotte Harris’s private life, it had nothing to do with the case.

“It is tabloid journalism at its worst rather than any legal standard, the fact that it was used for a legal case rather than for something that the tabloids were trying to do. It is astonishing.”

Listen to the key excerpts of the interview:

The revelations that News International had spied on Lewis and members of the culture, media and sport select committee – including Tom Watson – broke last night on Newsnight with further revelations in this morning’s Guardian. This evening, the BBC said there will be more developments in tonight’s programme.

And on Thursday, James Murdoch will reappear before the committee, to answer accusations he misled Parliament in his last appearance, as well as being pressed on these latest allegations.

See also:

• The Sun “tax avoiding” front page you won’t have seen this morning – Shamik Das, October 26th 2011

• The NUJ is the solution to the sickness at News International – Ruwan Subasinghe, October 6th 2011

• Hugh Grant, Ed Miliband and Unite join to bury the Digger for good – Alex Hern, September 27th 2011

• Tories used PIs “to spy on their own supporters” – Shamik Das, July 29th 2011

• Media committee failed to get Murdoch to accept responsibility – Sara Ibrahim, July 21st 2011