By Jill Lawless and Meera Selva
London - British police gave former News of the World tabloid editor
Rebekah Brooks a retired police steed to look after, the force confirmed
Tuesday — but they insisted it was not a gift horse.
The
Metropolitan Police said the horse was loaned to Brooks — former chief
executive of Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers — in 2008 under a
program that allows people to care for retired service animals and ride
them.
Brooks'
spokesman, David Wilson, confirmed that Brooks had been a "foster
carer" for the animal and paid for the upkeep of the horse while it was
stabled at her rural home.
"This is just a charitable thing Rebekah did," he said.
Brooks
is married to horse trainer Charlie Brooks and has a country home near
Chipping Norton, northwest of London, a posh rural enclave whose
residents include Prime Minister David Cameron. Wilson said the couple
"share a passion for horses."
The
force said when the horse — which was not identified by name — got too
old it was rehoused with a police officer in 2010. It has since died of
natural causes, police said.
Britain's media ethics inquiry is currently looking into claims of crooked relations between the press and police.
Brooks
is one of several current and former Murdoch executives who have been
arrested and questioned over wrongdoing by the News of the World, whose
journalists routinely intercepted the voicemails of people in the public
eye in a quest for scoops.
Murdoch closed the paper in July amid public revulsion over the revelations.
On
Tuesday the inquiry published a written statement from Canadian singer
Bryan Adams, who said he was shocked when The Sun, another Murdoch
tabloid, ran a story about him being stalked at his London home in 2008.
Adams,
52, said he had reported to police that a man and his mother were
harassing him by waiting outside his home and ringing his doorbell
incessantly. He said he had not discussed the incident with others and
believed that police had leaked the information to the newspaper.
"I
had not consented to this information being made public and I was very
annoyed that what I saw as a private issue was being reported without my
knowledge or consent," he wrote. "Although I have no proof, and
therefore it is of course speculation, I do not believe that there could
be any other explanation than the fact that the source must have been
someone related to my call to the police."
Also
Tuesday, former police detective Jacqui Hames told the inquiry that she
believed the News of the World had placed her and her police officer
husband under surveillance to intimidate them over a murder inquiry her
husband was working on.
Hames'
husband David Cook had led an investigation into the 1987 death of
private investigator Daniel Morgan, an unsolved murder that has been
blighted by police corruption. The most recent attempt to prosecute the
case collapsed in March 2011, and the Guardian newspaper later reported
alleged corrupt links between the suspects involved and the News of the
World.
Hames
said she had asked Brooks in 2003 why they had spied on her and her
husband and said she did not receive a satisfactory answer.
"I
believe that the real reason for the News of the World placing us under
surveillance was that suspects in the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry were
using their association with a powerful and well-resourced newspaper to
try to intimidate us and so attempt to subvert the investigation,"
Hames testified to the inquiry.
