Men cleared in Beckham kidnap trial to sue 'News of the World'
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Two men who were accused by the News of the World of plotting to kidnap Victoria Beckham plan to sue the newspaper after the case against them collapsed in court.
The families of the two Romanian men said they would be taking legal action against the paper after the Crown Prosecution Service decided last week that its key witness was unreliable.
Adrian Pasareanu, 27; Alin Turcu, 18; Luzim Balliu, 30, and two others who cannot be named for legal reasons were arrested by police after an undercover investigation by the newspaper.
The News of the World claimed they had been planning to kidnap Ms Beckham and her children outside the family home in Hertfordshire and hold them to ransom. But the case collapsed on Monday after the CPS accepted that Florim Gashi, who had accepted £10,000 from the paper for a tip-off and who had previous convictions for dishonesty, was an unreliable witness.
The father of Mr Pasareanu said that his son, a medical student, would sue the newspaper for libel. He told the Media Guardian website: "Adrian told me that while he was at a party in London one of the guests started a conversation about how to make money without working and the name of Victoria Beckham was mentioned. Someone recorded the conversation and got £10,000 for the tape."
Ioan Pasareanu said the claims against his son were "fantasies". He said: "I always trusted British justice would see through this and my son now plans to take legal action against the newspaper."
Judge Simon Smith said at Middlesex Crown Court on Monday that he was referring the News of the World to the Attorney General over its role in the collapsed case.
The mother of another of the accused men, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told a Romanian newspaper that her son had already initiated legal action against the paper. "I knew that he was not guilty from the very beginning," she said. "Three days after he was arrested ... he told us it was a set-up organised by a 'scandal newspaper'."
The woman said her son would remain in Britain until the case was resolved.
The News of the World said yesterday it had not received any legal letters from the men.