London – Prince Harry returned to London on Monday, sitting in the UK’s highest court, for the third and final part of his highlights. Legal battles against Britain’s tabloid newspapers.
Harry is among high-profile claimants, along with Sir Elton John and actresses Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, who have accused the Associated Newspapers group of “illegal information gathering”.
The 41-year-old King, who lives in California, and his celebrity associates say the company that publishes the Daily Mail and linked website MailOnline was illegally raided by hiring private investigators to hack phones, bug out cars and create notebooks to access private records.
The publisher has denied all the allegations, saying it was part of a coordinated effort fueled by the claimants’ personal dislike of the news outlet for “nonsensical smears”.
In a witness statement seen by CBS News, Harry said it was “disturbing to feel like my every move, thought or feeling was being followed and monitored, just for the Mail to make money”, adding that the “terrifying” intrusion made him “more paranoid than believable, isolating”.
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Harry, Duke of Sussex, whose case is based on 14 different newspapers, says the alleged illegal gathering of information between 1993 and 2011 put a “great strain” on his personal relationships. He has long blamed the media for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car accident in 1997 while photographers were riding motorcycles in her vehicle.
His lawyer argued at the court hearing on Monday that there was “a clear, systematic and persistent pattern of illegal information gathering by the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday”.
Testimony from several private investigators who said they worked on behalf of Associated Newspapers will be used in the trial. A network partner of CBS News BBC news Harry announced on Monday that he would take the stand to give evidence himself.
In 2019, in his first legal battle with the press against the owners of The Mirror over phone hacking, Harry became the first senior member of the royal family to testify in a British court in more than 130 years. The courts ruled in his favor several times in that case.
“The reporters who used me and the editors who sanctioned this knew full well that I was a practitioner of the ‘Dark Arts,'” private investigator Steve Whittamore said in testimony before the trial, which began Monday. “If the journalists had legitimately obtained the information they requested … then the newspapers would not need to use my private services.”
Another witness, known as “Detective Danno,” says Maila paid more than $1 million for his 20-plus years of work on the paper.
The publisher has argued that the evidence of private detectives cannot be trusted.
Royah Nikkhah, royal editor of The Sunday Times and a CBS News contributor, said Monday that Prince William appeared to be “full of confidence” in his case, but “he doesn’t really like the prospect of being in court all week.”
Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing News Group Newspapers settled out of court with the king, offering a full formal apology for the “gross intrusion” and a payment of millions of dollars.
The case against Associated Newspapers is expected to last nine weeks, ending with a decision by Judge Matthew Nicklin, whose ruling will determine not only the lasting reputation of a media giant, but who will foot the bill for tens of millions of dollars in legal costs.
“If Harry wins this case, it will give him the feeling … that he wasn’t being paranoid all along,” Nikkhah told CBS News. “If Harry loses this case, it’s a big risk for him, not just in terms of cost, but in terms of pushing it to trial and not settling. So we have to wait and see, but it’s a big gamble for Harry.”