Former News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck spoke out against News International on Thursday, alleging that he has been trying to warn the company about illegal phone hacking at the newspaper for the past two years.
Thurlbeck is one of the central figures in the phone hacking scandal that started at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid and spread to the British press, police and public figures. He was arrested on suspicion of hacking voicemail messages in April, but has insisted that he will eventually be found innocent.
On Thursday, Thurlbeck told the BBC that he tried to pass evidence of widespread phone hacking at the now-shuttered News of the World along to higher-ups at News International -- to no avail.
"They were quite happy at the News of the World for me to linger under a state of permanent suspicion because the alternative was to implicate directly other people on the newspaper," he said.
Thurlbeck claimed he had started collecting articles that he suspected were based on hacked messages for his personal dossier, "fully realizing that one day I might have to produce it." The Daily Mail reports that the dossier may include a taping of a reporter alleging that a senior executive at the newspaper commissioned the hacking of footballer Gordon Taylor.
The police seized those materials from Thurlbeck's home on Wednesday.
Thurlbeck made his statement following News International executive James Murdoch's second testimony on phone hacking in Parliament. Murdoch maintained that he was unaware of the extent of phone hacking at his company's newspaper.
