Leveson Inquiry: Media vilified me, Christopher Jefferies says

The landlord wrongly arrested over Joanna Yeates's murder has told the inquiry into media ethics that the media had "shamelessly vilified" him.

Christopher Jefferies' statement to the Leveson Inquiry told of a "frenzied campaign to blacken his character".
He said the tabloid press had decided he was guilty of the murder, which happened in Bristol in December 2010.
Some headlines over which Mr Jefferies successfully sued included "The Strange Mr Jefferies: Creepy".
In other evidence on Monday, ex-Army intelligence officer Ian Hurst told the inquiry his emails had been illegally accessed by a private investigator working for the News of the World (NoW).
Earlier, Robert Jay QC read a statement by Mr Jefferies to the inquiry, which is being held at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
"The national media shamelessly vilified me. The UK press set about what can only be described as a witch hunt," it said.
"It was clear that the tabloid press had decided that I was guilty of Miss Yeates's murder and seemed determined to persuade the public of my guilt.
"They embarked on a frenzied campaign to blacken my character by publishing a series of very serious allegations about me which were completely untrue.
"Allegations which were a mixture of smear, innuendo and complete fiction."
Former teacher Mr Jefferies described how his reputation was left in tatters after police wrongly arrested him over the murder of landscape architect Miss Yeates.

Dutch engineer Vincent Tabak was convicted of her murder last month.

Miss Yeates, 25, was strangled in her Clifton flat by Tabak, her 33-year-old neighbour, Bristol Crown Court heard.
Her body was found at the roadside on Christmas Day, eight days after she had been reported missing.
Mr Jefferies said he had been "besieged" by the press after his release and had stayed with friends as he had been "very strongly advised" not to go out.
"If it had been apparent where I was staying, those friends would have been besieged by reporters and photographers," he said.
He said he had been "effectively under house arrest" for a period as if he was a "recusant priest at the time of the Reformation going from safe house to safe house".
He also said it had been suggested there was some sort of sexual motive for the murder of Miss Yeates and that he was gay.
'House arrest' "That created a bit of a problem as far as that line goes," he explained.
"There was another suggestion that I was a bisexual. The press were trying to have it every possible way."
The inquiry heard about a Daily Mirror article headlined "Jo Suspect Is Peeping Tom" and another asking "Was Jo's body hidden next to her flat?".

Ian Hurst secretly filmed the private investigator he claims illegally accessed emails on his computer

Mr Jefferies said the coverage had been "as sensational, as exploitative, as titillating to appeal in every possible way to people's voyeuristic instincts".
Later, former Army intelligence officer Ian Hurst discussed a BBC Panorama programme in which he was shown emails he alleges were hacked from his computer on behalf of the News of the World.
He was told that the paper had employed a private detective, who in turn employed a "specialist hacker" who had worked with Mr Hurst in the intelligence services for three years.
Mr Hurst said his computer had been hacked by a "Trojan horse" - a programme in which harmful code is contained inside apparently harmless data and allows a third party access to email exchanges.
Documents seized in 2007 by the police show the security on his computer had been compromised, but the Metropolitan Police did not tell M Hurst until October 2011.
Mr Hurst said Mr X, who was secretly film by the former intelligence officer, told him he had been targeted because of his work in Northern Ireland.
Blogger summoned Meanwhile, Lord Justice Leveson has summoned political blogger Paul Staines to appear before the inquiry.
Mr Staines, who runs the Order-Order political website under the name Guido Fawkes, supposedly published confidential evidence online.
It included a link to papers submitted to lawyers by former Downing Street communications chief Alastair Campbell. Mr Staines claims to have obtained the papers legally.
Mr Staines is due to give evidence to the inquiry later this week over the documents he published relating to Mr Campbell.
Singer Charlotte Church has started to give evidence and is likely to describe how a NoW story about her father having an affair almost led to her mother's suicide.
The inquiry has already heard that Ms Church has experienced journalists installing secret cameras in bushes and photographers trying to take pictures up her skirt.
Prime Minister David Cameron set up the Leveson Inquiry in July after it emerged that the NoW had hacked murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone after she had disappeared. The paper was shut down within weeks.

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Ken Russell, Women In Love director, dies at 84

Film director Ken Russell, who was Oscar-nominated for his 1969 film Women In Love, has died at the age of 84.

His son, Alex Verney-Elliott, said he died in hospital on Sunday following a series of strokes.
During his career, he became known for his controversial films including Women In Love, which featured Oliver Reed and Alan Bates wrestling nude.
He also directed the infamous religious drama The Devils and The Who's rock opera, Tommy, in 1975.
"My father died peacefully, he died with a smile on his face," Mr Verney-Elliott said.

Russell's widow, Elize, said she was "devastated" by her husband's death, which had been "completely unexpected".

She said the director had recently agreed to direct a musical feature film of Alice In Wonderland and had been working on the script and casting.
"He also had just completed an article for The Times on a review of the re-release of his film The Devils, so he was keeping himself very busy," she added.
Glenda Jackson, who gave an Oscar-winning performance in Women In Love and starred in a number of Russell's other films including Music Lovers, told the BBC it was "just wonderful to work with him and to work with him as often as I did".
"He created the kind of climate in which actors could do their job and I loved him dearly."
Jackson added that she believed the director had been overlooked by the British film industry, saying it was "a great shame".
"It was almost as if he never existed - I find it utterly scandalous for someone who was so innovative and a film director of international stature," she said.
'Creative force' Joely Richardson, who starred opposite Sean Bean in Russell's 1993 BBC TV series Lady Chatterley, said: "I will forever feel privileged and honoured to have worked with the great Ken Russell.
"More than that, I was extremely fond of the man himself."
Film-maker Michael Winner hailed Russell's "duplicity of mind", adding he had made an "enormous contribution" to British cinema.
"He pushed the barriers completely and got away with it sometimes and didn't others, but he made some startling movies," said.
"He had an eye for the composition of each image on the screen - a great eye for imagery and then, of course, he had a great idea for the grotesque."

Film-maker Michael Winner pays tribute to the director Ken Russell

Lord Melvyn Bragg, who first worked as Russell's assistant in 1963 on BBC programme Monitor, said he was "an exceptional man".
"He was a glorious director at his best, his best films will be remembered. He was a tremendous ornament to the rather supine British film industry and he was the glory of the television arts industry," he said.
Friend and cultural commentator Norman Lebrecht said: "Among many achievements that spring to mind, he made British cinema less insular and self-referential.
"He was also a leading creative force in the history of British television. He will be widely mourned."
Russell later returned to more small budget, but no less flamboyant fare, including Crimes of Passion, Gothic, Salome's Last Dance and the cult horror-comedy The Lair of the White Worm, starring Hugh Grant.
The director also made an adaptation of DH Lawrence's The Rainbow followed by the gritty film, Whore, and even tried his hand at music videos, making Nikita for Sir Elton John.
Many of Russell's later films were dismissed as too eclectic and by the 1990s he found it almost impossible to get funding for his work.
He returned to the public eye in 2007, when he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother.
He lasted just four days before quitting the show after a disagreement with fellow contestant, the late Jade Goody.

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DR Congo votes amid delays and violence

Voters in DR Congo are choosing their leaders in elections marred by violence and logistical difficulties.

At least four people have died after gunmen attacked polling stations in the second city, Lubumbashi, officials say.
Voting has been delayed in some areas because of a lack of ballot papers in polls contested by President Joseph Kabila and 10 other candidates.
It is the second election since the end of successive wars which left some four million people dead.
At least three people were killed on Saturday in election clashes, leading to a police ban on final campaign rallies in this mineral-rich country, which is two-thirds the size of Western Europe.
Ahead of the vote, international organisations appealed for calm.
Etienne Tshisekedi, 78, seen as the strongest opposition candidate, has accused President Kabila, 40, of planning to rig the election.
Some 22,000 UN peacekeepers are stationed around the country and are expected to help prevent any outbreaks of violence.
Helicopter deliveries Election officials have been scrambling to get ballot papers distributed to all 60,000 of the polling stations in this vast country which has very little transport infrastructure.

In many inaccessible areas, voting material was delivered by helicopter.

Despite calls for the election to be delayed to give time to improve the preparations, election officials said on Sunday that everything was 99% ready.
Polling stations opened at 0600 local time. Because of the time difference in this continent-sized country, this was 0400 GMT in eastern areas and an hour later in the west.
The BBC's Mamadou Moussa Ba in the south-eastern mining capital of Lubumbashi says gunmen - suspected to belong to a secessionist movement - attacked two polling stations in the city.
But the AFP news agency quotes a military spokesman as saying that two policeman and a civilian were killed and two soldiers wounded.
"The two police were killed at point blank range and a female voter was hit by a deadly stray bullet," the spokesman is quoted as saying.
He also said that some attackers had been killed.
"I can't say how many, we are collecting the bodies."
The governor of the local Katanga province, Moise Katumbi, told Reuters news agency that three attackers had been killed and seven arrested.
Two vehicles carrying election materials were also attacked overnight just outside Lubumbashi, our reporter says.
The attackers wounded one driver and a security officer and set voting material on fire, election officials said.
Our reporter says there are lengthy delays at some polling stations, which had failed to open six hours after voting was due to start, although polling began on time in other areas.
'Serious impediment' The BBC's Christophe Pons in Kinshasa says all the voting material is in place at the polling stations he has visited and the election is proceeding smoothly although not many voters are braving the heavy rains.

However, the AP news agency reports that voting has been delayed due to a lack of ink in some areas, while some voters have told the BBC they have been unable to cast their ballots - either because they cannot find their names on the electoral register, or because someone had already voted in their place.

As well as the 11 presidential candidates, more than 18,000 are vying for seats in the 500-member parliament.
In some areas, the ballot paper runs to several pages and resembles a newspaper because there are so many parliamentary candidates.
This is likely to cause some confusion in a country where one-third of adults cannot read or write.
Following Saturday's violence, police blocked Mr Tshisekedi at Kinshasa airport for seven hours on Sunday to prevent him going ahead with a rally.
The European Union observer mission criticised both the police and the various candidates over the pre-election violence.
Delaying Mr Tshisekedi from leaving the airport had been "a serious impediment" to his right to campaign, the mission said.
The United Nations too, criticised the security forces.
"The security forces should refrain from any acts that could heighten tensions and create any difficulties on the eve of elections," Reuters news agency quoted Mounoubai Madnodje, spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo, as saying.
The last election, in 2006, was marred by weeks of street battles led by supporters of the losing candidate, Jean-Pierre Bemba.
A former rebel leader, he is now on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says that whether it is peaceful or not this time will depend to a great extent on the behaviour of the candidates and whether the losers are willing to accept defeat.

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