Ian Paisley Jnr says his phone was hacked

DUP MP Ian Paisley jnr has revealed that he was the victim of phone hacking.

The North Antrim politician says his mobile phone voice mails were repeatedly accessed by reporters at the News of the World.

He says the conviction of Andy Coulson, Prime Minister David Cameron’s former spin doctor and former News of the World editor for hacking “is a big moment in the history of journalism in the UK”.

“The trial resulted in guilty pleas and verdicts for six people whilst four others were acquitted from this terrible intrusive crime of phone hacking,” the MP says on his Facebook page.

“As a victim of the crime I know just a little of the trauma and intrusion this has on people.

“My phone was hacked between 2006-2009 and no doubt about it journalists benefited from that intrusion and theft of private messages.

“Indeed one journalist confronted me in Belfast one day with print outs of my own text messages and claims that she was going to publish them!

“When I enquired how she got them and that it was a criminal offence to have then she just laughed.

“Another BBC journalist once confronted me and asked me about phone messages on my own phone so blatant was the intrusion.

“The recent inquiry into phone hacking was in my view a whitewash it never properly focussed in Northern Ireland news rooms where some, not all of this criminal activity was ongoing.

“The vast majority of journalists are just doing a job and do it professionally.

“But that handful of scumbags who like Coulson would stop at nothing to get an angle and to destroying someone’s life for a headline when their own life is in grubby tourmoil is utterly despicable..”