The High Court heard yesterday that newspaper reports Prince Harry says are the result of phone hacking were actually sourced from fellow members of the Royal Family and even his own interviews.
The Duke of Sussex is suing the Daily Mirror’s publisher, alleging that he was the victim of illegal information gathering, such as phone hacking.
However, the publisher told the judge that many of the stories came from other royals or palace courtiers, and that one of the articles he is upset about was based on an on-the-record interview Harry provided.
The tabloid denies hacking Harry’s phone, setting the stage for a judicial showdown with the duke, who will become the first senior British royal to testify in court since 1890.
He is scheduled to testify in the lawsuit early next month, where he will be questioned about his claims that he was regularly hacked by Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and The People.
He was not present in court yesterday, but his lawyer, David Sherborne, said he was a victim of ‘industrial-scale’ hacking from 1995 until 2011. The judge was handed 33 items that were allegedly obtained through illegal information collecting.
However, the publisher’s attorney, Andrew Green KC, told the court that “many came from information disclosed by or on behalf of royal households or members of the Royal Family,” as well as freelance journalists or private sources “with extensive royal contacts.” Mr Green stated that in one example, the report complained about was based on “an on-the-record interview given by the Duke of Sussex himself.”
Yesterday, the tabloid began the trial by apologizing to Harry for one instance in 2004, when The People paid a private investigator to obtain information about the prince’s behavior at Chinawhite, a celebrity nightclub in Soho.
Mr. Green noted that while the £75 charge paid’suggests little labor was involved,’ Harry, pictured, was ‘entitled to pay for this incident,’ despite the fact that he had not included the article in his claim. According to Harry, the alleged illegal acts caused him “huge distress” and “a huge amount of paranoia in my relationships.”
He alleges that Mirror Group journalists were able to rent a hotel room for him at Bazaruto, a small island off the coast of Mozambique, where he was staying with his then-girlfriend, Chelsy Davy. Among the witnesses invited to testify in the lawsuit will be Omid Scobie, a writer who authored a glowing biography of Harry and Meghan.
The prince is one of four claimants in the Mirror Group case. The others are Nikki Sanderson and Michael Turner from Coronation Street, as well as comedian Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife Fiona Wightman.
The Mirror case is one of three in which Harry is suing UK publications in the High Court. He is suing the Daily Mail and The Sun publishers, who both deny all of his claims.
