Global Courant
Prince Harry began testifying at London’s High Court on Tuesday in his trial against a tabloid publisher whose titles he charges with phone hacking and other unlawful activities, the first senior royal to do so in more than a century.
Harry, fifth in line to the throne, smiled briefly as he passed the phalanx of waiting photographers and camera crews as he arrived at the modern Rolls Building in central London ahead of the very rare appearance of a royal court.
Harry and more than 100 others are suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publishers of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, over allegations of widespread misconduct between 1991 and 2011.
King Charles’ youngest son will be questioned on the witness stand for hours by Andrew Green, MGN’s lawyer. According to him, more than 33 newspaper articles were based on illegally obtained information. Green has said he plans to question Harry for about a day and a half.
Harry is the first British royal to give testimony in 130 years. An ancestor, the future King Edward VII, appeared as a witness in a trial of a gambling scandal in 1891.
No vendetta, says Harry’s lawyer
The MGN trial began last month, with attorneys for Harry and the other plaintiffs trying to prove that unlawful information gathering was conducted with the knowledge and approval of senior editors and executives.
Harry is one of four test cases and his specific allegations are the focus of the first three days of this week.
Harry did not appear on Monday, after leaving the United States, where he now lives with his American wife Meghan, only the night before because his daughter Lilibet had a birthday on Sunday. The judge, Timothy Fancourt, said he was surprised by his absence.
Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne said on Monday that the prince had been the subject of thousands of MGN stories since he was a young boy, and as such was regularly the target of unlawful conduct, with his late mother, Princess Diana, also a victim of hacking. . .
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Harry wanted to draw attention to the illegal activities, but not because he has a “vendetta” against the press, Sherborne said.
MGN, now owned by Reach, apologized at the start of the process after admitting that the Sunday People had illegally sought information about Harry on one occasion and previously admitted that the titles were involved in phone hacking, leading to more than 600 claims were settled.
But Green, MGN’s lawyer, said there was no evidence that Harry had ever been a victim of phone hacking, let alone the usual way as he claimed, and rejected that he had been a victim of any further unlawful actions .
Buckingham Palace is likely to feature prominently in Harry’s cross-examination, with MGN claiming some of the personal information involved came from senior royal aides, including one of his father’s former top officials.
In his memoirs Spare, Netflix documentaries and other TV interviews, the prince has repeatedly accused his family and their aides of collaborating with tabloids to improve their reputations at his expense.
The palace has not commented on those allegations.
