Detective sentenced in London hack case

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LONDON, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- A London police counter-terrorism officer was convicted of misconduct for offering to sell information and was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment.

April Casburn, 53, became the first person convicted in the London Metropolitan Police inquiry for offering the newspaper News of the World information about an investigation into phone-hacking by the newspaper, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

The sentencing of Casburn, a detective chief officer at Scotland Yard, came Friday after a four-day trial, The New York Times said.

The jury in the trail was told evidence implicating Casburn was provided to the police by an internal investigative department at News of the World, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The department was part of Murdoch's 2011 pledge his company would hand over any information pertinent to the scandal, the Times said.

Casburn told the court she telephoned News of the World in 2010 because she was angry her supervisors diverted money and manpower from terrorism issues to the scandal, and thought she was acting in the public interest. She also denied taking payments from the newspaper, the Times said.

Justice Adrian Fulford, in passing sentence, told Casburn he would have imposed a stiffer jail term had she not recently adopted a child who would be affected by her absence, The Daily Telegraph reported.