Footballer is latest celebrity to sue paper, as police show NI's Rebekah Brooks evidence she may also have been targeted
Ryan Giggs is the latest celebrity to begin legal proceedings against the News of the World and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire over phone hacking.
The Manchester United footballer is suing the paper's publisher News Group Newspapers for breach of privacy, claiming that his mobile phone messages were intercepted by journalists working for the paper.
Separately, the Guardian can also reveal that Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News Group's parent company News International, was shown evidence for the first time last week by the Metropolitan police which suggests she was also targeted by Mulcaire.
Brooks, a former News of the World editor, was in charge of News International sister paper the Sun during the period when Mulcaire was working for the Sunday title.
Giggs has chosen to renew his hostilities with Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire just weeks after his battle to prevent it from reporting details of his alleged affair with Imogen Thomas ended in failure when an MP named him in parliament and thousands of people revealed his identity on Twitter.
Matthew Himsworth, a solicitor at Giggs's law firm Schillings, said: "I can confirm that proceedings have been issued today."
It is understood that Giggs was visited by officers from the Metropolitan police in Manchester several weeks ago, before he was named as the footballer who took out an injunction against News Group Newspapers.
Met officers had meetings with several players, including Giggs's Man Utd team mate Wayne Rooney, who is also suing the News of the World.
Detectives from Operation Weeting, the Met's new investigation into phone hacking which began at early this year, are in the process of contacting everyone who might have been targeted by Mulcaire.
Like other potential victims, Giggs would have been shown copies of documents seized by the police in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire's home.
That paperwork details his activities during 2005 and 2006, when Giggs was allegedly conducting an eight-year affair with his sister-in-law, details of which were revealed by the News of the World 10 days ago.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/15/ryan-giggs-news-of-the-world-phone-hacking
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