Rupert Murdoch aide Brooks re-arrested in hacking probe: Report

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British police investigating tabloid phone hacking have re-arrested Rebekah Brooks, ex-editor of the News of the World and one-time top aide to media mogul Rupert Murdoch, it was reported on Tuesday.

Sky News said Brooks, 43, was among six people held on suspicion of perverting the course of justice following dawn raids by officers investigating hacking at the newspaper, which Murdoch shut down last July.

Brooks was arrested for the first time last year on suspicion of phone hacking and bribing public officials, just three days after she resigned as head of the tabloid's publisher, News International.

She has always denied any wrongdoing.

Police confirmed the arrest of a 43-year-old woman from Oxfordshire, west of London, but did not name her.

Brooks lives in Oxfordshire with her racehorse trainer husband Charlie Brooks, a close friend of Prime Minister David Cameron. Charlie Brooks was also reportedly among those arrested on Tuesday morning.

News International did not immediately make any comment on the arrests, nor did Brooks' personal spokesman.

Scotland Yard said one woman and five men aged between 38 and 49 were arrested.

"The co-ordinated arrests were made between approximately 0500 (GMT) and 0700 this morning by officers from Operation Weeting, the MPS inquiry into the phone-hacking of voicemail boxes," a police statement said.

"All six -- five men and one woman -- were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice."

A total of 23 people have now been arrested as part of Scotland Yard's investigation into phone hacking, while a further 23 people have been held under a separate but linked investigation into the bribery of public officials.

Among those arrested under the bribery probe are 11 current or former journalists at the best-selling Sun daily, which is also owned by Murdoch.

Nobody has yet been charged in the two police investigations, although the News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman and a private investigator were jailed for phone hacking following a separate police probe in 2006.