FORMER News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks and her husband were among six people arrested in dawn raids yesterday on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

They were arrested by officers from Operation Weeting, the Metropolitan Police probe into phone-hacking, and their homes were being searched last night.

Mrs Brooks, who rose from editor to chief executive of News International, the British arm of the Murdoch media empire, was arrested at her Oxfordshire house with her husband Charlie, a millionaire race-horse trainer and columnist for the Telegraph.

The arrests came as Rupert Murdoch tried to shore up demoralised staff at his UK daily newspaper, the Sun, telling them the investigation by News Corporation’s management and standards committee into alleged corrupt payments and other acts of illegality was ‘‘substantially complete,’’ the Guardian reported.