Up to 10 mobile phones and iPads linked to Rebekah Brooks have disappeared and remain unaccounted for, the Old Bailey has heard.  Police evidence showed there were seven phones attributed to Brooks, including three iPhones, three BlackBerries and an HTC handset between 2007 and 2011, a period spanning her editorship of the Sun and her time as the publisher's chief executive.  Also on the master list, shown to the phone-hacking trial jury on Friday, were two iPads and an "unknown device" which has subsequently been identified as belonging to Sir Charles Dunstone, the founder of Carphone Warehouse.  A detective on the Operation Weeting team, DC Philip Stead, told the jury in the phone-hacking trial that when he asked News International what had happened to the devices, they replied: "No record of return, assume still with user."  Brooks's legal team in cross-examination suggested that several of the phones were old handsets and the reason there was no call data for some of them was because they were no longer in use.  Stead's evidence showed that at least seven of the 10 devices were unaccounted for.  The whereabouts of the remaining three were also unknown but there may have been an explanation for their disappearance, the jury heard.  Stead confirmed that two of the iPhones, listed as number 1 and number 8 on the NI master list, could in fact be the same phone. News International does not have the iPhone related to item number 1, but does have the Apple box, opening the possibility that item 8 is the phone that came from that package, the jury heard.  The second of the three items not totally unaccounted for was identified as a device linked to Brooks because data obtained by the police showed that it had connected to a router in or near Brooks's Oxfordshire home, Jubilee Barn, in 2011.  It was identified as logging in to the router as "Charless iPad" and it recently came to light that this belonged to the Carphone Warehouse boss. "Sir Charles Dunstone says it is his machine," prosecutor Andrew Edis told the jury and further inquiries were being made by police.  Jonathan Laidlaw QC, counsel for Brooks, told the court: "If the police are satisfied if it is Mr Dunstone's he is a friend of the Brookses and has been in their home. It would be consistent with [him being] at some point being in their home and he would have used the internet and been provided with the password."  The final item on the master list, identified as an iPad, may have been one that Brooks reported missing in April 2011.  The Metropolitan police's Operation Weeting obtained an email from Brooks dated 1 April 2011 to her husband Charlie, and copied into her secretary Cheryl Carter: "Lost iPad2." He replied: "Back of car last night? Restaurant? Doesn't seem to be here."  All of the mobile phones were disconnected by News International on 27 September 2011, two months after Brooks resigned as chief executive and was arrested in connection with the phone-hacking scandal that had led to the closure of the News of the World.  All had different connection dates. DC Stead confirmed that one of her three BlackBerries had been connected to the phone network on 4 October 2007 when she was editor of the Sun.  Paul Cheesbrough, former chief information officer for News International, confirmed in a witness statement that "News UK was not in possession of these devices".  Laidlaw put it to Stead that the missing list did not provide an accurate picture. He suggested that three BlackBerries, the HTC phone and one of the iPhones could have been old handsets. In addition, he said, one of the three iPads belonged to Dunstone, another appeared to have been lost and one of the remaining two iPhones may have been listed twice on the list.  "Assume News International's practice is when executives' phones are broken, fail to work or when new BlackBerry [models] arrive, the practice was to provide a new phone … in other words the number was kept but handset changed," he said, asking Stead if he could decipher a changeover of devices from the data the police had obtained.  He replied: "I don't think we can tell," he said because investigators didn't have the IMEI [the International Mobile Station Equipment Identity] numbers which are unique to each phone.  Laidlaw told the court that Brooks had used the same number "for years and years". Stead confirmed that a BlackBerry she used had been confiscated when she was arrested in July 2011.  Rebekah Brooks, Charlie Brooks and Cheryl Carter all deny they were involved in a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Ex-News International chief's lawyer contests claim, suggesting several of the devices are obsolete and not connected to her. By Lisa O'Carroll