Rebekah Brooks of News of the World fame charged

The former News of the World CEO, a close friend of media moghul Rupert Murdoch, Rebecca Brooks, her husband and four of her close friends have been charged with plotting to hide evidence in the phone scandal saga.

She has angrily attacked Police for dragging her friends and family into the scandal which shocked the United Kingdom that led to the closure of the 167 year old newspaper, News of the World.

At the time of the closure it was the most popular tabloid in the UK with a readership of eight million.

Rebecca said she is 'baffled' to face charges and the allegations that she and her husband and four others plotted to hide evidence were "an expensive sideshow and a waster of public money".

Rebecca who reaches her 44th birthday on the 27th of this month was born in Warrington in Lancashire. She once stated that she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. But she did not claim to have a degree and did not later answer questions about this.

It reminds me of a similar story of a leading politician who was in the limelight in Sri Lanka sometime ago.

In 2010, Brooks was awarded an honourary Fellowship from the University of Arts, London, for her contribution to journalism. Tim Minogue, one of her first co-editors, recalled her as 'likeable, skinny, hollow-eyed girl who was very ambitious'.

Youngest editor

After school, she worked for a French magazine in Paris, before returning to Britain to work. She gained experience in various newspapers and magazines before she joined News of the World as a Secretary in 1989. She became a feature writer and the deputy editor of the newspaper.

In 1994, she arranged for the News of the World's an interview with James Hewitt, a paramour of Princess Diana, by reserving a hotel suite and hiring a team to 'kit it out with secret tape devices in various flowerpots and cupboards'. It was 'the story' at the time.

She became the editor of the 'News of the World' in 2000, to be the youngest editor of a national paper in the United Kingdom. She pioneered the campaign of ‘naming and shaming’ individuals suspected to be convicted child sex offenders - a campaign launched in the wake of the murder of Sarah Payne.

The paper's decision led to angry mobs terrorising those they suspected of being child sex offenders, which included several cases of mistaken identity and one instance where a paediatrician had her house vandalised, apparently by people who thought her occupation meant she was a paedophile.

The campaign was described as 'grossly irresponsible' journalism by the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, Tony Butler, but Brooks defended the paper's actions on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost, claiming that it was 'only right that the public have controlled access' to information on sex offenders.

The paper's already strong sales held up well under her leadership, while those of rival Sunday newspapers The People and the Sunday Mirror fell more sharply. Meantime the former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott praised Brooks's handling of the story of his wife, Pauline, giving up one of her children for adoption as ‘very reasonable and professional’ in style.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, has been charged with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Brooks is accused in one charge of conspiring with her PA, Cheryl Carter, to "remove seven boxes of material from the archives of News International".

In a separate charge she is accused of conspiring with her husband, Hanna, her chauffeur and a security consultant to conceal ‘documents and computers’ from the investigating detectives. All the offences are alleged to have taken place in July last year.

The six people are the first to be charged as a result of the new Scotland Yard investigation into phone hacking. The inquiry is one of three linked investigations for which the Yard has budgeted Sterling Pounds 40 m until 2015.

In a defiant statement delivered outside her solicitor's London office, she added: "Although I understand the need for a thorough investigation, I am baffled by the decision to charge me. However, I cannot express my anger enough that those close to me have unfairly been dragged into this."

She said: "Whilst I have always respected the criminal justice system, I have to question today whether this decision was made on a proper impartial assessment of the evidence".

Lack of evidence

Her husband said, "I feel today is an attempt to use me and others as scapegoats, the effect of which is to ratchet up the pressure on my wife, who I believe is the subject of a witch-hunt.

There are 172 Police officers, about the equivalent of eight murder squads, working on this; so it doesn't surprise me that the pressure is on to prosecute, no matter how weak the cases will be".

"I have no doubt that the lack of evidence against me will be borne out in court but I have grave doubts that my wife can ever get a fair trial, given the huge volume of biased commentary which she has been subjected to. We will fight this in court."

They have been released on Police bail until August, said Scotland Yard.

The charge carries a maximum penalty of life, although the average term served in prison is 10 months.