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Andy Coulson, the News of the World and phone hacking – interactive timeline

How the saga unfolded – from suspicions that Prince Williams voicemail was being hacked, to the resignation of David Cameron's director of communications

Alicia CanterNick DaviesChristine Oliver

Phone hacking: full list of the victims identified so far. As a spreadsheet

As Andy Coulson resigns over phone-hack claims here are the victims identified so far

• Get the data

Andy Coulson has resigned as director of communications at No 10 in the wake of phone-hack claims from his previous role as editor of News of the World. As Coulson's story unfolds, we take another look at the list of phone hack victims, as presented by Nick Davis:

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal refuses to die: a senior News of the World executive has been suspended by the paper following a "serious allegation" that he was involved with phone hacking when the paper was edited by Andy Coulson, now the prime minister's director of communications.

The list of victims covers every area of public life: actor Sienna Miller, the actor and comedian Steve Coogan and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire Host Chris Tarrant joined the growing list of public figures taking legal action for alleged phone hacking by the News of the World.

There are broadly three categories of people who have been identified as victims or possible victims of phone hacking by Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World's private investigator. Although the total number of names runs into the thousands, few so far have been identified.

First, there are those who have been approached and warned by Scotland Yard that there was hard evidence of their voicemail being accessed without authority. Some were warned at the time of the original inquiry in 2006. Others were warned only after the Guardian revived the story in July 2009. Scotland Yard refuse to say how many were warned at either time. They have said that they also approached and warned people in four 'national security' categories if there was reasonable grounds to suspect that their voicemail might have been accessed without authority - members of the royal household, the military, the police and the government. But here again, they refuse to say how many people they warned in each of those categories.

Second, there are those who have taken the initiative to approach Scotland Yard and to ask whether the police hold any evidence that they were targeted in any way by Mulcaire. Scotland Yard are holding the results of an analysis of phone records which, we now know, revealed "a vast number" of people who had had their voicemail accessed; and also a spreadsheet which summarises the contents of the mass of paperwork, audio tapes and computer records which police seized from Mulcaire and which, the Guardian discovered, included 4,332 names or partial names; 2,987 mobile phone numbers; 30 audio tapes of varying length; and 91 PIN codes of a kind which are needed to access voicemail with the minority of targets who change the factory settings on their mobile phones.

Third, there are 120 people who were identified by three mobile phone companies who followed up on Scotland Yard's original investigation and found that some of their users had had their voicemail accessed from numbers used by Glenn Mulcaire. Orange say they warned none of those whom they identified; Vodafone say they warned customers 'as appropriate'; O2 say they warned all of their customers whom they identified.

Victims so far identified in any of these three categories:

Data summary

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Timeline: how the scandal that led to Andy Coulson's resignation developed

From Buckingham Palace calling in Scotland Yard in 2005 to the CPS mounting a review of phone-hacking material

December 2005

• Buckingham Palace suspects interference with voicemail of Prince William and royal staff, and calls in Scotland Yard.

May 2006

• Detectives tell prosecutors that phone call data shows "a vast number of public figures" have had their voicemail intercepted.

August 2006

• Police arrest Goodman and Mulcaire, seize computer records, paperwork and audiotapes but decide not to investigate it. No other journalists are interviewed.

January 2007

• Goodman and Mulcaire are jailed. Prosecutors identify only eight victims. Andy Coulson resigns as editor, claiming to have known nothing.

May 2007

• Press Complaints Commission publishes hacking report, finding no further evidence of wrongdoing.

July 2007

• Coulson appointed as media adviser to David Cameron.

July 2009

• The Guardian reveals that one of the eight victims, Gordon Taylor, has been paid £1m to drop legal action that would have named other News of the World journalists.

September 2009

• Scotland Yard discloses that it found suspected victims in government, military and police as well as royal household.

November 2009

• PCC publishes second report, finding no further evidence of wrongdoing.

February 2010

• Commons media select committee finds it "inconceivable" that Goodman acted alone.

March 2010

• The Guardian reveals that another of the eight victims, Max Clifford, has been paid £1m to drop legal action that would have named other News of the World journalists.

April 2010

• News of the World suspends feature writer Dan Evans amid new hacking allegations.

September 2010

• New York Times quotes a former NoW reporter, Sean Hoare, claiming Coulson actively encouraged hacking.

• The Guardian quotes a former NoW executive, Paul McMullan, saying Coulson must have known about hacking.

• Scotland Yard reopens inquiry, looking only at "new" evidence, opting to question Hoare and McMullan as suspects, not witnesses.

• The former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott and others launch legal action seeking a judicial review of Scotland Yard investigation.

December 2010

• Prosecutors announce the Scotland Yard inquiry has found no new evidence of crime.

• Sienna Miller's lawyers announce they have found new evidence in the material seized by Scotland Yard in August 2006.

January 2011

• Ian Edmondson, the News of the World's assistant editor (news), is suspended following a "serious allegation" relating to phone hacking during Andy Coulson's editorship of the paper.

• The CPS announces it will mount a "comprehensive" review of phone-hacking material held by the Metropolitan police amid fresh revelations in the courts.

• More alleged victims of phone hacking, including comedian Steve Coogan and football pundit Andy Gray, lodge high court demands for more information from Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective at the centre of the allegations.

• In documents submitted to the high court Mulcaire claims Edmondson asked him to hack into voicemail messages left on a mobile phone belonging to football agent Sky Andrew.

• 21 January: Andy Coulson resigns as David Cameron's director of communications, saying the continuing phone hacking coverage "has made it difficult for me to give the 110% needed in this role".

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10 days in Sweden: the full allegations against Julian Assange

Unseen police documents provide the first complete account of the allegations against the WikiLeaks founder

Documents seen by the Guardian reveal for the first time the full details of the allegations of rape and sexual assault that have led to extradition hearings against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.

The case against Assange, which has been the subject of intense speculation and dispute in mainstream media and on the internet, is laid out in police material held in Stockholm to which the Guardian received unauthorised access.

Assange, who was released on bail on Thursday, denies the Swedish allegations and has not formally been charged with any offence. The two Swedish women behind the charges have been accused by his supporters of making malicious complaints or being "honeytraps" in a wider conspiracy to discredit him.

Assange's UK lawyer, Mark Stephens, attributed the allegations to "dark forces", saying: "The honeytrap has been sprung ... After what we've seen so far you can reasonably conclude this is part of a greater plan." The journalist John Pilger dismissed the case as a "political stunt" and in an interview with ABC news, Assange said Swedish prosecutors were withholding evidence which suggested he had been "set up."

However, unredacted statements held by prosecutors in Stockholm, along with interviews with some of the central characters, shed fresh light on the hotly disputed sequence of events that has become the centre of a global storm.

Stephens has repeatedly complained that Assange has not been allowed to see the full allegations against him, but it is understood his Swedish defence team have copies of all the documents seen by the Guardian. He maintains that other potentially exculpatory evidence has not been made available to his team and may not have been seen by the Guardian.

The allegations centre on a 10-day period after Assange flew into Stockholm on Wednesday 11 August. One of the women, named in court as Miss A, told police that she had arranged Assange's trip to Sweden, and let him stay in her flat because she was due to be away. She returned early, on Friday 13 August, after which the pair went for a meal and then returned to her flat.

Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again". Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her.

According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had "done something" with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing.

When he was later interviewed by police in Stockholm, Assange agreed that he had had sex with Miss A but said he did not tear the condom, and that he was not aware that it had been torn. He told police that he had continued to sleep in Miss A's bed for the following week and she had never mentioned a torn condom.

On the following morning, Saturday 14 August, Assange spoke at a seminar organised by Miss A. A second woman, Miss W, had contacted Miss A to ask if she could attend. Both women joined Assange, the co-ordinator of the Swedish WikiLeaks group, whom we will call "Harold", and a few others for lunch.

Assange left the lunch with Miss W. She told the police she and Assange had visited the place where she worked and had then gone to a cinema where they had moved to the back row. He had kissed her and put his hands inside her clothing, she said.

That evening, Miss A held a party at her flat. One of her friends, "Monica", later told police that during the party Miss A had told her about the ripped condom and unprotected sex. Another friend told police that during the evening Miss A told her she had had "the worst sex ever" with Assange: "Not only had it been the world's worst screw, it had also been violent."

Assange's supporters point out that, despite her complaints against him, Miss A held a party for him on that evening and continued to allow him to stay in her flat.

On Sunday 15 August, Monica told police, Miss A told her that she thought Assange had torn the condom on purpose. According to Monica, Miss A said Assange was still staying in her flat but they were not having sex because he had "exceeded the limits of what she felt she could accept" and she did not feel safe.

The following day, Miss W phoned Assange and arranged to meet him late in the evening, according to her statement. The pair went back to her flat in Enkoping, near Stockholm. Miss W told police that though they started to have sex, Assange had not wanted to wear a condom, and she had moved away because she had not wanted unprotected sex. Assange had then lost interest, she said, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had sex at least once when "he agreed unwillingly to use a condom".

Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no. "According to her statement, she said: 'You better not have HIV' and he answered: 'Of course not,' " but "she couldn't be bothered to tell him one more time because she had been going on about the condom all night. She had never had unprotected sex before."

The police record of the interview with Assange in Stockhom deals only with the complaint made by Miss A. However, Assange and his lawyers have repeatedly stressed that he denies any kind of wrongdoing in relation to Miss W.

In submissions to the Swedish courts, they have argued that Miss W took the initiative in contacting Assange, that on her own account she willingly engaged in sexual activity in a cinema and voluntarily took him to her flat where, she agrees, they had consensual sex. They say that she never indicated to Assange that she did not want to have sex with him. They also say that in a text message to a friend, she never suggested she had been raped and claimed only to have been "half asleep".

Police spoke to Miss W's ex-boyfriend, who told them that in two and a half years they had never had sex without a condom because it was "unthinkable" for her. Miss W told police she went to a chemist to buy a morning-after pill and also went to hospital to be tested for STDs. Police statements record her contacting Assange to ask him to get a test and his refusing on the grounds that he did not have the time.

On Wednesday 18 August, according to police records, Miss A told Harold and a friend that Assange would not leave her flat and was sleeping in her bed, although she was not having sex with him and he spent most of the night sitting with his computer. Harold told police he had asked Assange why he was refusing to leave the flat and that Assange had said he was very surprised, because Miss A had not asked him to leave. Miss A says she spent Wednesday night on a mattress and then moved to a friend's flat so she did not have to be near him. She told police that Assange had continued to make sexual advances to her every day after they slept together and on Wednesday 18 August had approached her, naked from the waist down, and rubbed himself against her.

The following day, Harold told police, Miss A called him and for the first time gave him a full account of her complaints about Assange. Harold told police he regarded her as "very, very credible" and he confronted Assange, who said he was completely shocked by the claims and denied all of them. By Friday 20 August, Miss W had texted Miss A looking for help in finding Assange. The two women met and compared stories.

Harold has independently told the Guardian Miss A made a series of calls to him asking him to persuade Assange to take an STD test to reassure Miss W, and that Assange refused. Miss A then warned if Assange did not take a test, Miss W would go to the police. Assange had rejected this as blackmail, Harold told police.

Assange told police that Miss A spoke to him directly and complained to him that he had torn their condom, something that he regarded as false.

Late that Friday afternoon, Harold told police, Assange agreed to take a test, but the clinics had closed for the weekend. Miss A phoned Harold to say that she and Miss W had been to the police, who had told them that they couldn't simply tell Assange to take a test, that their statements must be passed to the prosecutor. That night, the story leaked to the Swedish newspaper Expressen.

By Saturday morning, 21 August, journalists were asking Assange for a reaction. At 9.15am, he tweeted: "We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks'. Now we have the first one." The following day, he tweeted: "Reminder: US intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks as far back as 2008."

The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet asked if he had had sex with his two accusers. He said: "Their identities have been made anonymous so even I have no idea who they are. We have been warned that the Pentagon, for example, is thinking of deploying dirty tricks to ruin us."

Assange's Swedish lawyers have since suggested that Miss W's text messages – which the Guardian has not seen – show that she was thinking of contacting Expressen and that one of her friends told her she should get money for her story. However, police statements by the friend offer a more innocent explanation: they say these text messages were exchanged several days after the women had made their complaint. They followed an inquiry from a foreign newspaper and were meant jokingly, the friend stated to police.

The Guardian understands that the recent Swedish decision to apply for an international arrest warrant followed a decision by Assange to leave Sweden in late September and not return for a scheduled meeting when he was due to be interviewed by the prosecutor. Assange's supporters have denied this, but Assange himself told friends in London that he was supposed to return to Stockholm for a police interview during the week beginning 11 October, and that he had decided to stay away. Prosecution documents seen by the Guardian record that he was due to be interviewed on 14 October.

The co-ordinator of the WikiLeaks group in Stockholm, who is a close colleague of Assange and who also knows both women, told the Guardian: "This is a normal police investigation. Let the police find out what actually happened. Of course, the enemies of WikiLeaks may try to use this, but it begins with the two women and Julian. It is not the CIA sending a woman in a short skirt."

Assange's lawyers were asked to respond on his behalf to the allegations in the documents seen by the Guardian on Wednesday evening. Tonight they said they were still unable obtain a response from Assange.

Assange's solicitor, Mark Stephens, said: "The allegations of the complainants are not credible and were dismissed by the senior Stockholm prosecutor as not worthy of further investigation." He said Miss A had sent two Twitter messages that appeared to undermine her account in the police statement.

Assange's defence team had so far been provided by prosecutors with only incomplete evidence, he said. "There are many more text and SMS messages from and to the complainants which have been shown by the assistant prosecutor to the Swedish defence lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, which suggest motivations of malice and money in going to the police and to Espressen and raise the issue of political motivation behind the presentation of these complaints. He [Hurtig] has been precluded from making notes or copying them.

"We understand that both complainants admit to having initiated consensual sexual relations with Mr Assange. They do not complain of any physical injury. The first complainant did not make a complaint for six days (in which she hosted the respondent in her flat [actually her bed] and spoke in the warmest terms about him to her friends) until she discovered he had spent the night with the other complainant.

"The second complainant, too, failed to complain for several days until she found out about the first complainant: she claimed that after several acts of consensual sexual intercourse, she fell half asleep and thinks that he ejaculated without using a condom – a possibility about which she says they joked afterwards.

"Both complainants say they did not report him to the police for prosecution but only to require him to have an STD test. However, his Swedish lawyer has been shown evidence of their text messages which indicate that they were concerned to obtain money by going to a tabloid newspaper and were motivated by other matters including a desire for revenge."

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Timeline: how the News of the World phone-hacking scandal developed

From Buckingham Palace calling in Scotland Yard in 2005 to court papers lodged by Sienna Miller's lawyers today

December 2005

• Buckingham Palace suspects interference with voicemail of Prince William and royal staff, and calls in Scotland Yard.

May 2006

• Detectives tell prosecutors that phone call data shows "a vast number of public figures" have had their voicemail intercepted.

August 2006

• Police arrest Goodman and Mulcaire, seize computer records, paperwork and audiotapes but decide not to investigate it. No other journalists are interviewed.

January 2007

• Goodman and Mulcaire are jailed. Prosecutors identify only eight victims. Andy Coulson resigns as editor, claiming to have known nothing.

May 2007

• Press Complaints Commission publishes hacking report, finding no further evidence of wrongdoing.

July 2007

• Coulson appointed as media adviser to David Cameron.

July 2009

• The Guardian reveals that one of the eight victims, Gordon Taylor, has been paid £1m to drop legal action that would have named other News of the World journalists.

September 2009

• Scotland Yard discloses that it found suspected victims in government, military and police as well as royal household.

November 2009

• PCC publishes second report, finding no further evidence of wrongdoing.

February 2010

• Commons media select committee finds it "inconceivable" that Goodman acted alone.

March 2010

• The Guardian reveals that another of the eight victims, Max Clifford, has been paid £1m to drop legal action that would have named other News of the World journalists.

April 2010

• News of the World suspends feature writer Dan Evans amid new hacking allegations.

September 2010

• New York Times quotes a former NoW reporter, Sean Hoare, claiming Coulson actively encouraged hacking.

• The Guardian quotes a former NoW executive, Paul McMullan, saying Coulson must have known about hacking.

• Scotland Yard reopens inquiry, looking only at "new" evidence, opting to question Hoare and McMullan as suspects, not witnesses.

• The former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott and others launch legal action seeking a judicial review of Scotland Yard investigation.

December 2010

• Prosecutors announce the Scotland Yard inquiry has found no new evidence of crime.

• Sienna Miller's lawyers announce they have found new evidence in the material seized by Scotland Yard in August 2006.

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WikiLeaks cables: You ask, we search

A further instalment of user-suggested research among the leaked US embassy cables – including the Pirate party, the 2001 Genoa G8 summit, the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Lembit Opik

• @Falkvinge asked about references to the Pirate party

An unclassified June 2009 cable from the US embassy in Stockholm with the subject "AARGH! SWEDISH PIRATES SET SAIL FOR BRUSSELS" said that the Pirate party had been one of the big winners, along with the Greens, of the June 2009 European parliamentary elections, finding support from young voters unhappy with the Swedish government's decision to shut down the Pirate Bay, a file-sharing BitTorrent site that had become a target of the Motion Picture Association of America.

The Pirates secured a "whopping 7.1% and one seat in parliament", it added, going on to say: "A side effect of the Pirates' success is that it most likely reduced the chances for the far-right nationalist Sweden Democrats to gain representation in the EP. The Pirates have some of the same voter base – young men with mistrust for politicians.

"In any case the Pirates' landslide among younger voters caught the attention of the larger parties, our contacts tell us, who are now scrambling to come up with policies to woo the youth back to the mainstream."

A later cable, in September 2009, marked sensitive, reports on a "courtesy call" paid by the US ambassador to Sweden, Matthew Barzun, on Sweden's deputy prime minister, Maud Olofsson.

The cable states that Barzun concluded the meeting by raising intellectual property rights, "since Olofsson's party is the one member of the ruling coalition least supportive of US efforts to improve Sweden's efforts against illegal filesharing".

"She pointed to the success of Sweden's Pirate party in the European parliamentary elections as an example that young people do not trust us," it stated. Ben Quinn

• @molleindustria asked about the 2001 Genoa G8 summit

The US embassy in Rome criticised the Bush administration's analysis of human rights abuses by Italian police at the Genoa G8 protests in 2001 because it harmed the Berlusconi government, a leaked diplomatic dispatch reveals.

Under the title "As predicted, Italy's human rights report generates fodder for domestic political mills", it said that a 2002 human rights report published by the US state department had played into the hands of Italy's centre-left.

"Italy's opposition will continue to hurl the stones that come to hand in their efforts to unseat a popular prime minister [Silvio Berlusconi], and we just handed them some new ones," the cable said.

The state department report criticised in particular a raid during the G8 summit by Italian police on a school where around 100 activists had their headquarters. It stated that the serious injury to 60 of these protesters at the hands of police amounted to human rights abuse. It also noted that the reasons for their detainment were based on fictitious evidence invented by the police.

The cable said the Italian foreign ministry's North America office director, Geri Schiavoni, had complained that the 9,000-word report did not give the events sufficient context, and that the embassy should have ensured the report was written "with sufficient nuance". The embassy added: "We agree."

The cabled continued: "We remain dissatisfied with the iterative process of drafting this year's report … The final product is not as consistent or defensible as it should have been."

It concluded: "We do not want to see an already delicate situation – where the USG has been drawn into the centre-left opposition's previously largely unheard accusations against a relatively popular government – made worse."

The Genoa summit in July 2001 attracted around 200,000 protesters, 329 of whom were arrested. Four hundred protesters and 100 policemen were injured. One protester – 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani – was shot dead by police. Both Italian courts and the US report said the policeman who caused the death was acting in self-defence. Patrick Kingsley

• A user asked about Anna Politkovskaya

Murdered Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya had claimed that she had become accustomed to receiving death threats and "she had accepted the possibility that she could be killed at any time, and talked about it very little", a source revealed to the US ambassador to Moscow in 2006.

The rather chilling insight into Politkovskaya state of mind before her murder in 2006 appears in a confidential cable dated 9 October 2006.

The source is said to have claimed that Politkovskaya "constantly" received threats – "by telephone, letter, by e-mail, by SMS". The most frequent threats, the source said, had come from the Chechen prime minister "Kadyrov's people" (not necessarily with Kadyrov's knowledge) and the Russian special forces, whose brutalities in Chechnya had been exposed by Politkovskaya.

The killing of Politkovskaya brought world attention to the plight of Russian journalists trying to expose what they believe to be widespread corruption in Russia. The 48-year-old was found shot dead in a lift at her apartment block in the capital. Two Chechen brothers and a former policemen charged with directly aiding her murderer were acquitted last year. Politkovskaya's killer remains at large. Jason Rodrigues

• @arjanvrh asked about the Dutch purchase of Joint Strike Fighter aircraft

Cables dating back to at least 2004 reveal the US embassy in The Hague closely monitoring the increasingly fraught debate in the Netherlands over its purchase of a number of Joint Strike Fighters (JSF), a defence project being developed primarily by the US company Lockheed Martin.

Further cables reveal a crucial background context: the importance that the US attaches to its relationship with the Dutch. "With the EU divided and its direction uncertain, the Dutch serve as a vital transatlantic anchor in Europe," said one in August 2005.

It went on to conclude: "Dutch pragmatism and our similar world-views make the Netherlands fertile ground for initiatives others in Europe might be reluctant, at least initially, to embrace. Coaxing the Dutch into the spotlight can take effort, but pays off royally."

However, the JSF has proved a politically divisive issue. A compromise was reached after a bitter parliamentary debate in April last year for the Netherlands to buy one test aircraft and delay the decision to purchase operational aircraft until 2012.

But that soon looked shaky. By September another cable was reporting that the Dutch defence minister was concerned over the omission from the 2010 US defence budget of a second engine for the JSF (F-136), in which it said Dutch industry had "high value" contracts. It went on to link the issue to delicate efforts to convince the Dutch to keep troops in Afghanistan.

"Cancelling the F-136 program could scuttle Dutch participation in JSF and raise doubts about American defense partnerships as we ask the Dutch to stay the course with us in Afghanistan," it said.

A cable from February of this year reports on the fall of the Dutch government, stating that conflicts within the Christian Democrat-PvdA coalition, including over the JSF, had prompted several cabinet crises over recent months

"Frustration among government ministers has been building for the past year. In April, the cabinet almost fell over a dispute over whether to purchase the Joint Strike Fighter test aircraft," it said.

The coalition, it concludes, was brought down ultimately as a result of "posturing" over Afghanistan. The cable goes on to report that the Dutch foreign minister's chief of staff, Marcel de Vink, had told US diplomats that the government would be unable to retain troops in Afghanistan's Uruzgan region after 2010.

"There's no way the Dutch forces will stay in Uruzgan ... that door is locked," the cable quoted him as saying. Ben Quinn

• And this on Lembit Opik

Former Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik told the US ambassador that Nick Clegg was thin-skinned, overly reliant on cronies, and stole one of his ideas, according to assertions attributed to Opik in a leaked diplomatic dispatch from March 2008.

In a cable marked confidential, Opik is also reported to have mouthed off to US ambassador Robert Tuttle about a spat between him and Clegg.

It said that the one-time Lib Dem housing spokesman told the ambassador that Clegg "has surrounded himself with insiders who carry out his wishes without consulting others, thus allowing Clegg to avoid direct confrontation".

Opik is also said to have complained about Clegg's "thin skin", citing an argument between the two men. The cable states: "Clegg derided one of Opik's suggestions in front of the Lib Dem cabinet, then adopted it without telling Opik. When Opik confronted Clegg about it, Opik says he was immediately whisked away by a Clegg crony who begged him not to make a scene in public."

Opik lost his parliamentary seat in May's general election, and twice ran unsuccessfully for Liberal Democrat party president, in 2004 and 2008. Away from politics, he has appeared on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here and Come Dine With Me. Patrick Kingsley

• To make further suggestions, tweet @GdnCables with as many specifics as possible (names, dates, embassies). Twitter refuseniks can email newseditor@guardian.co.uk with the same specific information in the subject field, but please keep the rest of the message short.

All suggestions are logged and prioritised for investigation. We will publish more tomorrow and over the next few days

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Phone hacking approved by top News of the World executive – new files

High court papers lodged by Sienna Miller's lawyers contradict paper's insistence that a single 'rogue' journalist was involved

Lawyers have secured explosive new evidence linking one of the News of the World's most senior editorial executives to the hacking of voicemail messages from the phones of Sienna Miller, Jude Law and their friends and employees.

In a document lodged in the high court, the lawyers also disclose evidence that the hacking of phones of the royal household was part of a scheme commissioned by the newspaper and not simply the unauthorised work of its former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, acting as a "rogue reporter", as it has previously claimed.

The 20-page document, written by Sienna Miller's solicitor, Mark Thomson, and barrister, Hugh Tomlinson, cites extracts from paperwork and other records that were seized by police from the News of the World's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, in August 2006. The material has now been released to the lawyers on the orders of a high court judge.

The document claims Mulcaire's handwritten notes imply that the news editor of the NoW, Ian Edmondson, instructed him to intercept Miller's voicemail and that the operation also involved targeting her mother, her publicist and one of her closest friends as well as Law, her former partner, and his personal assistant. During the operation Mulcaire obtained confidential data held by mobile phone companies in relation to nine different phone numbers, the notes reveal.

The document, which has been released to the Guardian by the high court, suggests that the hacking of the two actors was part of a wider scheme, hatched early in 2005, when Mulcaire agreed to use "electronic intelligence and eavesdropping" to supply the paper with daily transcripts of the messages of a list of named targets from the worlds of politics, royalty and entertainment.

The new evidence explicitly contradicts the account of the News of the World and its former editor Andy Coulson, who is now chief media adviser to the prime minister. The paper and Coulson have always claimed that the only journalist involved in phone hacking was Goodman, who was jailed with Mulcaire in January 2007. Ian Edmondson is the fourth of Coulson's journalists to be implicated in the affair since Goodman was convicted.

The disclosure is gravely embarrassing for Scotland Yard, which has held the information about the two actors in a large cache of evidence for more than four years and repeatedly failed to investigate it. Last week the Crown Prosecution Service announced that there was no evidence to justify further charges after a Yard inquiry that was specifically tasked not to look at the material gathered in 2006.

Miller is suing the NoW's parent company, News Group, and Mulcaire, accusing them of breaching her privacy and of harassing her "solely for the commercial purpose of profiting from obtaining private information about her and to satisfy the prurient curiosity of members of the public regarding the private life of a well-known individual".

The high court paperwork suggests that a sequence of 11 articles published by the News of the World in 2005-2006 about Miller and Law used information that had been obtained illegally from their voicemail, exposing their thoughts about having children, their travel plans, an argument between the two of them and their discussions about their relationships with other people. This caused Miller "extreme concern about her privacy and safety as well as enormous anxiety and distress".

The document says that Sienna Miller suspected her mobile phone was not secure and changed it twice, but Mulcaire's handwritten notes show that he succeeded in obtaining the new number, account number, pin code and password for all three phones. He obtained similar details that would be necessary for hacking the phone of her close friend Archie Keswick; for three phones belonging to her publicist, Ciara Parkes; for Jude Law; and for Law's personal assistant, Ben Jackson. The notes show that Mulcaire gathered other data on Miller's mother and on Keswick's girlfriend.

The document records that at the trial of Clive Goodman it was revealed that Mulcaire wrote the word "Clive" in the top left-hand corner of his notes of hacking undertaken on Goodman's behalf. According to the high court document Mulcaire's notes for the hacking of Miller "in several cases were marked 'Ian' in the top left-hand corner, which the claimant infers to be Ian Edmondson". Edmondson was appointed news editor of the NoW by Coulson and still holds the job.

The new evidence implies that the targeting of the royal household, which led to the original police inquiry, was specifically commissioned by the paper. "In or about January 2005 the News of the World agreed a scheme with Glenn Mulcaire whereby he would, on their behalf, obtain information on individuals relating to the following: 'political, royal and showbiz/entertainment'; and that he would use electronic intelligence and eavesdropping in order to obtain this information. He also agreed to provide daily transcripts."

The News of the World and Scotland Yard have previously claimed Goodman acted alone, as a "rogue reporter", in hacking the royal phones and they knew nothing about interception of any voicemail.

Among those named as targets of this wider scheme are six of the victims identified in the original court case in January 2007 and also Miller's friend Keswick. Mulcaire is said to have used "deception or other unlawful means" to obtain confidential data from mobile phone companies, to have intercepted the targets' voicemail and to have provided "transcripts and other details" to the News of the World's journalists.

Scotland Yard will have to explain why it failed to inform Miller and the other targets of evidence it held about them. The Yard had agreed with the Crown Prosecution Service that it would approach and warn all "potential victims".

It will also have to explain why it did not interview Edmondson, who was also named last month in a separate phone- hacking case brought by Nicola Phillips, former assistant to the PR agent Max Clifford. The judge in that case has ordered Mulcaire to say if it was Edmondson who instructed him to intercept her voicemail. Mulcaire has appealed against the order.

Scotland Yard also failed to interview three other journalists who have now been implicated. In the perjury trial in Glasgow of the socialist politician Tommy Sheridan, the jury has been shown handwritten notes in which Mulcaire recorded Sheridan's mobile phone number and pin code and wrote the word "Greg" in the top left-hand corner. The court has been told that refers to Greg Miskiw, an assistant editor at the NoW under Coulson.

Last year documents revealed by the Guardian showed that Miskiw had signed a contract with Mulcaire, using an alias, offering him £7,000 to bring in a story about the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, Gordon Taylor, whose voicemail was then intercepted; and that one of Coulson's news reporters, Ross Hindley, had emailed transcripts of 35 intercepted voicemails involving Gordon Taylor for the attention of the chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. Neither Miskiw, Hindley or Thurlbeck was interviewed by the original inquiry.

The new evidence discloses that it was Thurlbeck who signed the formal contract paying Mulcaire £2,019 a week to work exclusively for the News of the World, and that Edmondson subsequently exchanged emails with Mulcaire about extending it. Questioned at Sheridan's trial last week, Coulson said that this was "a legitimate contract for legitimate legal work".

The high court material raises questions about the security of data held by mobile phone companies, whose staff may be tricked or bribed into disclosing it.

The lawyers have obtained records from Miller's phone company, Vodafone, which suggest that in November 2005 Mulcaire, posing as "John from credit control", tricked staff into changing her pin code. Vodafone will have to explain why it failed to warn her that her voicemail had been accessed. The company has previously claimed that it warned victims among its customers "as appropriate".

More than 20 journalists who worked for the NoW have told the Guardian, the New York Times and Channel 4's Dispatches that illegal activity assisted by private investigators was commonplace and well known to executives, including Coulson. Coulson has always denied this.

More than 20 public figures are now in the early stages of suing the News of the World and Mulcaire for breach of privacy. The former deputy prime minister John Prescott and others are seeking a judicial review of Scotland Yard's handling of the case, which may lead to a new inquiry.

Tom Watson, a Labour member of the commons culture select committee, said: "This is very significant evidence. It is clear the net is closing in on one of the biggest media scandals in post war history."

News of the World phone-hacking scandalAndy CoulsonNewspapers & magazinesNews of the WorldNational newspapersNewspapersDavid CameronNick Davies
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Phone-hacking inquiry left a mountain of evidence unexplored

If the Guardian can find numerous News of the World journalists who admit that the newspaper gathered information by illegal means, why can't Scotland Yard? Asks Nick Davies

Here's the riddle. If the Guardian, the New York Times and Channel 4's Dispatches can all find numerous journalists who worked at the News of the World who without exception insist that the newspaper routinely used private investigators to gather information by illegal means, why can't Scotland Yard find a single one who will tell them the story?

In their original inquiry into the phone-hacking affair, in 2006, detectives arrested the paper's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and charged him with listening to messages on the royal household's mobile phones. Goodman refused to answer questions.

Scotland Yard then interviewed not one single other journalist, editor or manager from the paper. Detectives took this decision despite holding evidence that – we now know – clearly identified other News of the World journalists who were involved in handling illegally intercepted voicemail.

In their recent inquiry, which ended fruitlessly last week, they attempted to interview only three journalists, all of whom were identified for them by news organisations.

They approached those three not as witnesses but as suspects, warning them that anything they said could be used to prosecute them: two gave interviews in which they declined to answer questions; the third challenged them to arrest him in handcuffs, and so they never even spoke to him.

Scotland Yard appears to be playing a dangerous game. The latest inquiry was the third time police have looked at the phone-hacking saga and the third time they have come up empty: neither the prime minister's media adviser and former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, nor anybody else from the paper has any case to answer, they say.

The police will say they are playing by the rules. The danger is that some of the public figures who believe their voicemail was intercepted will bring out the evidence that police have failed to find, in which case Scotland Yard is going to be accused of being involved in a cover-up. A kind of do-it-yourself policing is emerging.

These public figures span a spectrum from the most powerful in the land – Tony Blair and his family, Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah, through to global celebrities such as Sienna Miller, to classic tabloid targets including the late Jade Goody's trustees.

Some have been told that police do have evidence that Mulcaire was targeting them, although Scotland Yard refuse to reveal it without a court order. Some have been told there is no evidence about them. Some have complained that they have received misleading answers. And several dozen of them have recently received letters admitting that they may have been misinformed.

A growing number is now on the way to court. And there is the real danger.

This whole affair broke open last year because one of the few victims named in court, Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers' Association, sued the News of the World. The judge ordered police to hand over relevant evidence, which implicated three journalists, and the paper paid £1m to Taylor and two others on condition that they kept it quiet. Which they did – until the Guardian revealed the secret settlement last year.

Now, more and more public figures are following Gordon Taylor to court, where they will ask judges to order disclosure of relevant material from two caches of evidence, which police have been sitting on for more than four years. The first cache is the data they gathered from phone companies in the first six months of their inquiry, in 2006. It was this data which enabled them to tell the Crown Prosecution Service at the time that "a vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high-profile individuals have been identified as being accessed without authority". The CPS said this revealed "a vast array of offending behaviour".

Police then arrested Goodman and Mulcaire, at which point, from the investigator, they obtained their second cache of evidence: a mass of computer records, hand-written notes, audio tapes, including 3,000 mobile phone numbers, as well as invoices on which Mulcaire had identified the public figures he was targeting.

The original investigation failed to pursue the "vast array of offending" revealed by the phone data and simply filed the cache of material seized from Mulcaire without even searching it.

When the Guardian revived the story last year, an assistant commissioner, John Yates, spent less than 24 hours "establishing the facts" of the case and announced his conclusion without knowing the contents of the seized material. The most recent inquiry, which ended last week, was tasked to consider only "new" evidence and so once again ignored the material which the police have held for more than four years.

Quite why Scotland Yard should behave like this remains unproved – another riddle waiting to be solved.

Andy CoulsonNews of the World phone-hacking scandalPrivacy & the mediaNews of the WorldCrimeConservativesNick Davies
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Phone-hacking scandal: Yard move may hide journalists' spy roles

Scotland Yard says that public figures must supply evidence of a crime before material is handed over

The Metropolitan police have moved to close off the supply of information which could identify senior journalists at the News of the World who commissioned illegal phone hacking.

In a change of policy which has significant implications for the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, who used to edit the paper, police have said they will no longer provide all public figures with a summary of potentially relevant phone-hacking evidence in their possession.

The move relates to a mass of paperwork, computer records and audio tapes that police seized from the paper's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, in August 2006.

This material is believed to include the names of senior journalists who worked for Coulson and who instructed Mulcaire to target named public figures including politicians, sports personalities and showbusiness figures.

Police now admit privately that they failed to fully analyse this material during their original inquiry.

More recently, they have refused repeatedly to go back and investigate it and, when judges have ordered them to release particular portions of the material for court cases, they have blacked out large sections, including most of the references to the journalists who instructed Mulcaire.

However, until now, they have been willing to give public figures who contacted them a brief summary of references to them in the seized material.

According to Scotland Yard, 194 people have contacted them for these summaries since last July when the Guardian revealed the scale of phone hacking at the News of the World.

Scotland Yard has now changed its policy and their lawyers are replying to requests from public figures by telling them that they will hand over a summary of the material that was held on them by Mulcaire only if the public figure can persuade them that there are "reasonable grounds" for believing that their voicemail was intercepted.

One of the lawyers acting for suspected victims, Mark Lewis, from Taylor Hampton solicitors, said: "It's a bit like the police discovering that your house has been burgled, but you don't know that it's happened – and they won't tell you anything about it unless you can come up with your own evidence to show you've been a victim of the crime.

"It's a transparent attempt to stifle legal claims by concealing evidence. The police are obstructing justice."

On Friday Keir Starmer, director of public prosecutions, announced that Coulson would not face prosecution after the crown prosecution service spent four weeks studying material from a renewed Scotland Yard investigation.

He said new witnesses had refused to co-operate with the police and there was "no admissible evidence upon which the CPS could properly advise the police to bring criminal charges".

The evidence seized by Scotland Yard includes nearly 3,000 mobile phone numbers. Some of them are included in detailed notes kept by Mulcaire as he recorded his attempts to intercept his targets' voicemail.

Routinely, he used the top left-hand corner of the notes to write the name of the journalist who had chosen each target. On some, he wrote the name 'Clive', referring to Clive Goodman, the News of the World's royal correspondent, who was jailed in January 2007. Other notes are believed to include the first names of other senior journalists who have never even been interviewed by police.

Lawyers for some public figures have complained that they have received misleading information from Scotland Yard. A globally famous actress whose lawyer asked a series of specific questions about Mulcaire and her mobile phones was told that police had no evidence on the points – but they failed to tell her that her name showed up as a target of the investigator. Others received letters, which acknowledged Mulcaire had held information about them, but added that "there is no evidence that your voicemail was intercepted", without explaining that the police had not investigated or attempted to find any evidence on the point.

Senior Yard sources say they are worried about the outcome of a judicial review of their performance which is being sought by the former deputy prime minister John Prescott and others.

In preparation for that case, the Yard's lawyers recently wrote to several dozen public figures offering to review their earlier answer to questions, to ensure they were correct.

News of the World phone-hacking scandalAndy CoulsonPoliceLondonNews of the WorldNewspapers & magazinesNational newspapersNewspapersNick Davies
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