Michael Holden and Sam Tobin
Updated ,first published
London: Prince Harry held back tears in the witness box as he told London’s High Court on Wednesday that the Daily Mail had made his wife Meghan’s life “an absolute misery” as he gave evidence against the paper’s publisher in a privacy lawsuit.
The Duke of Sussex, 41, and six other claimants including singer Elton John are suing the Mail’s publisher Associated Newspapers for alleged privacy violations dating from the early 1990s to the 2010s.
Associated, which also publishes the Mail on Sunday, has called the allegations “preposterous smears”, saying its journalists relied on legitimate sources, including friends and acquaintances of the celebrities.
Harry, who in 2023 became the first royal in 130 years to give evidence in court during another lawsuit against the press, delivered a combative performance under questioning from Associated’s lawyer Antony White.
But he grew emotional when he was asked about the impact of the case, saying his treatment by Associated had “only got worse” since he sued the publisher in 2022.
“I think it is fundamentally wrong to have to put all of us through this again when all we were asking for is an apology and some accountability,” King Charles’ younger son said.
“It is a horrible experience and the worst of it is that by sitting up here and taking a stand against them … they continue to come after me.”
Choking up, Harry, who now lives with Meghan in California, added: “They have made my wife’s life an absolute misery.”
In a final exchange of his less-than-two-hour testimony, Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne asked how it felt to read Associated’s defence. Harry said it felt like “a repeat of a past, a recurring traumatic experience”.
“Having to sit here and go through this all again and have them claim I don’t have any right to any privacy is disgusting,” he said.
Earlier, he repeatedly rejected White’s suggestions that Mail journalists were close to his “leaky” social circle.
“For the avoidance of doubt, I am not friends with any of these journalists and I never have been,” Harry said in often-tetchy exchanges with White.
The prince’s case centres on 14 articles his legal team says were the product of unlawful information gathering, including by hacking voicemail messages, bugging landlines and obtaining private information by deception, known as “blagging”.
White said the information in the articles was legitimately obtained, putting it to Harry that a former royal editor of the Mail on Sunday, Katie Nicholl, was part of his social group.
Harry replied: “If the sources were so good, and she was hanging out with all my friends, then why was she using private investigators who have been connected to all the unlawful information gathering?”
He said he spoke to reporters and tried to be civil, but felt he had little choice even as they “commercialised my private life”.
Harry and the other claimants launched their legal action in 2022, for the first time dragging Associated’s titles into a phone-hacking scandal that had long dogged the British press.
The other claimants are Elton John’s husband David Furnish, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, anti-racism campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former lawmaker Simon Hughes.
Hurley is expected to give evidence on Thursday.
For Harry – who has long blamed the press for the 1997 Paris car crash that killed his mother, Princess Diana – the trial is the last leg of his battle with tabloids, having won an apology from Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm last year.
In his witness statement, Harry warned that “if the most influential newspaper company can successfully evade justice, then in my opinion the whole country is doomed”.
He said bringing the lawsuit was a “public duty”, adding: “When you’re up against such a behemoth and intimidating media organisation, the courts are your last and only hope.”
Reuters
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