You're reading: Journalist arrested in UK computer hacking probe

LONDON — British police investigating computer hacking and privacy offenses arrested a journalist Wednesday at his home.

The 28-year-old man was being questioned at a London police station for alleged hacking related to the identification of an anonymous blogger in 2009. He is also suspected of perverting the course of justice, police said.

Police did not identify the journalist by name, but the Press Association said he was Patrick Foster, a former reporter at The Times. The British news agency didn’t cite a source when identifying Foster.

The journalist was the 11th person arrested by detectives from Operation Tuleta, one of three parallel police investigations triggered by the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Britain and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire.

More than 40 people have been arrested in the probes of media wrongdoing and corruption. Criminal charges have been brought against suspects such as Rebekah Brooks, the former chief of News Corp.’s British operations, and Andy Coulson, a former Murdoch tabloid editor and the former communications chief for Prime Minister David Cameron.

Separately, police in Scotland said they detained and charged former News of the World journalist Bob Bird in Glasgow on Wednesday with attempting to pervert the course of justice during the 2006 defamation court case between the tabloid and former lawmaker Tommy Sheridan. Sheridan successfully sued the newspaper for defamation in 2006.

Bird, 56, edited the Scottish edition of the now-closed tabloid when it ran allegations about Sheridan’s private life.

“I have always done my best to do the right thing throughout the 30, 40 years of my journalistic career and I will be denying the charge against me,” he told reporters outside the police station after he was released later Wednesday.