Global Courant
LONDON — Prince Harry entered a London courtroom in an attempt to prove that the editor of the Daily Mirror tabloid had unlawfully snooped on his life.
He left the witness stand on Wednesday looking tired and unsure.
The Duke of Sussex said he was deeply suspicious of how reporters obtained information about him for stories from 1996 to 2011 that had caused him fear, but had little support for his allegations. He said journalists used burner phones and destroyed records, relying on such evidence that had been proven in other cases.
“I believe phone hacking was on an industrial scale in at least three of the newspapers at the time,” he claimed on his second day of testimony in the Supreme Court. “That is beyond any doubt.”
At the end of nearly eight hours of cross-examination over two days, attorney Andrew Green asked if Harry was aware of any evidence that his phone had been hacked over a 15-year period.
“No,” said Harry. “That’s part of the reason I’m here.”
Harry is on a mission to reform the British media, and the phone hacking allegations are at the center of his legal battle against publishers.
The case against Mirror Group Newspapers, which paid more than £100 million ($125 million) to settle hundreds of illegal information-gathering claims, is the first of its three hacking lawsuits to go to court. He says tabloid publishers invaded his privacy by tapping voicemails and hiring private investigators to report on the minutest details of his life, causing him great emotional turmoil.
Harry’s animosity towards the British media is reflected in his memoir, “Spare”. He blames paparazzi for the car accident that killed his mother, Princess Diana, and said intrusions by journalists led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the US in 2020 and live royal life to leave behind.
His lawyer said he was not pursuing a vendetta against the media, but seeking accountability, although Harry’s 55-page testimony suggested otherwise.
“How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before anyone can put an end to this madness?” He wrote.
His composure in court betrayed none of that bitterness.
He spoke softly and didn’t lose his temper, as witnesses often do during cross-examination – even though he was repeatedly asked to explain how an article had hurt him if he wasn’t sure he had read it at the time it was read. was published. .
“Most of the articles I don’t remember seeing,” he said. “Most were equally disturbing then and even more disturbing today during this process.”
The spectacle of the first senior member of the royal family to testify in court in over 130 years drew dozens of reporters, photographers and curious onlookers lucky enough to get a seat.
He wore a dark suit and white shirt both days and sometimes smiled, joked and laughed at others.
He got the laughs of about two dozen reporters on Tuesday when he dismissed a longtime royal family correspondent as someone he wouldn’t call a “specialist.”
As he juggled several large binders containing the articles about him, he joked, “I feel like I’m working out.”
Someone in the gallery sneezed in the middle of a testimony and he offered a ‘blessing’, without breaking the stride.
Known for his brutal cross-examination, Green took a respectful but direct approach as he tried to dismantle Harry’s allegations.
Green asked Harry if he really thought journalists would be stupid enough to risk being caught hacking phones after a News of the World reporter and a private investigator were jailed for such activities in 2007.
“I believe the risk is worth the reward for them,” Harry replied.
Green, who has said Harry’s phone had not been hacked, asked the witness if he would be relieved or angry if the judge came to the same conclusion.
“To have a decision against me… given that Mirror Group has admitted to hacking, yes, that would feel unfair,” Harry replied.
“So you want your phone hacked?” said Green.
“No one wants to be hacked,” Harry replied.
Judge Timothy Fancourt, who is due to pass judgment later this year, asked how long Harry had noticed unusual activity on his phone that he only later attributed to hacking.
“From the moment I had a mobile phone. … It never stopped,” Harry said. “I remember a lot of missed calls that lasted a second, I remember a lot of people asking me, ‘Did you get my voicemail?'”
Harry’s skepticism of the press included suggestions that anonymous sources were being fabricated and extended to people mentioned by name.
More than once he said that seeing something in print attributed to someone “doesn’t mean it’s true” and said false information was added to stories “to mislead people like me”.
When Harry couldn’t point out how wrongful information had been obtained about him, he told Green to ask the story’s reporter.
His own lawyer, David Sherborne, got that chance later when he took on former Royal Daily Mirror correspondent Jane Kerr, whose byline appears in several of the 33 stories mentioned in Harry’s trial.
The attorney expressed disbelief when she said she never suspected that private investigators paid by the newspaper to find individuals’ unlisted phone numbers and other details could have broken the law.
“I don’t recall ever directing anyone to do something illegal or knowing they were doing something illegal,” Kerr said.
In testimony, Kerr said that Mirror Group had acknowledged that it had instructed an investigator, Jonathan Stafford, to unlawfully obtain private information, and that her name appeared in documents relating to him.
“I had no reason to believe that Stafford’s practices were illegal, nor did I direct him to carry out such practices,” she said.
At the end of Harry’s testimony, his own lawyer was given a chance to ask questions and concluded by asking how he was doing after a day and a half on the witness stand.
“You have had to go through these articles and answer questions, knowing that this is a very public courtroom and that the media of the world are watching. How did that make you feel?” said Sherborne.
Harry seemed to choke. He took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled.
“It’s a lot,” he said with a tired smile.
