ANKARA
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications chief on Wednesday was cleared of perjury in a Scottish court, local media reported.
Andy Coulson, who served as Cameron’s director of communications from 2007 to 2011 after leaving his role as editor at the now defunct News of the World tabloid newspaper, walked free from the High Court in Edinburgh when the case against him collapsed, the Press Association agency said.
Coulson had testified at the perjury trial of Tommy Sheridan in 2006. Sheridan had sued the News of the World, claiming it had printed false reports about him.
Judge Lord Burns ruled halfway through the trial that Coulson, 47, had no case to answer. He had been accused of lying during the 2010 trial of former socialist politician Tommy Sheridan.
It had been claimed that Coulson committed perjury when he said, at Sheridan's trial, that he had no knowledge of phone hacking at the News of the World before 2006.
Burns said that he had not been persuaded that Coulson's evidence in the Sheridan case was relevant, and upheld a defense motion that Coulson had no case to answer.
