At war with the British tabloids, Prince Harry created a surprise on Monday March 27 by appearing before the High Court in London for a hearing against the publisher of the
Daily Mail.
Which is accused by several celebrities of having collected information illegally.
Arriving by taxi, the youngest son of King Charles III, who has postponed his state visit to France, rushed into the building before taking his place at the back of the room.
This is an extremely rare appearance in court by a member of the British royal family.
Prince Harry arrives for his hearing against the publisher of the
Daily Mail
at the High Court in London.
(March 27, 2023.) Pettitt Jordan
During the hearing which should last four days, the publisher of the
Daily Mail
, Associated Newspaper (ANL), will try to defeat the lawsuits brought by the Duke of Sussex but also the singer Elton John or the actress Liz Hurley .
Prince Harry's surprise trip to London, his first known to the UK since the death of Queen Elizabeth II in early September, comes just over a month before the king's coronation on May 6.
No meeting planned with the royal family
Exiled to the United States after crashing out of the monarchy in 2020, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle have been invited to the ceremony, but have not yet publicly announced whether they will honor the invitation.
For months now, the return of the "Sussex" to the United Kingdom to attend the coronation has been the subject of much speculation in the British media.
Especially, since the virulent attacks of the couple against the royal family.
After a documentary aired on Netflix in December, Harry released his controversial memoir
The Substitute
(
Spare
, in the original version) in early January, in which he recounts his drug and alcohol-ridden teenage years and details the breakdown of his relationship with his father, Charles, and his brother, William.
Harry is not expected to meet either in the coming days, according to British media.
The King was originally due to be absent from the UK on Monday and Tuesday for a state visit to France, which was postponed due to the social climate of sometimes violent protests linked to President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform.
However, he maintained his trip to Germany and will fly to Berlin on Wednesday.
For now, if we are to believe Buckingham Palace, it is neither in London nor in Windsor, on the outskirts of the capital.
Harry at war with the tabloids
Prince Harry holds the tabloid press responsible for the death of his mother Diana in 1997 in a car accident in Paris, pursued by the paparazzi.
He virulently criticizes his family's coverage and has launched several proceedings against the media.
In the legal proceedings initiated in London, the six plaintiffs claim to have been victims of "numerous unlawful acts" by or on behalf of ANL, according to the conclusions of their lawyer, David Sherborne.
Among them are "illegal interception of voice messages, wiretapping, obtaining private information such as telephone bills or medical records by deception" using private detectives, according to the lawyer.
Most of the facts denounced date back to the period 1993-2011, some dating from 2018.
When the procedure was announced at the beginning of October last year, the group had refuted "totally and without ambiguity these grotesque defamations which appear to be nothing more than a planned and orchestrated attempt to embroil the titles of the Mail in the
wiretapping
scandal phone calls about 30-year-old items.
Illegal eavesdropping scandals
The British press had been shaken about ten years ago by several scandals of illegal wiretapping practiced from the beginning of the 2000s. princes William and Harry but the emotion had peaked in the summer of 2011 when the tabloid News of the World had listened to the voicemail of a schoolgirl disappeared and finally found dead, Milly Dowler.
The revelations led to the crashing closure of media magnate Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloid, which paid two million pounds (2.3 million euros at the time) to Milly Dowler's family in a deal at the time. amicable. While many personalities have taken tabloids to court after being tapped, this is the first time that such lawsuits have targeted the publisher of the Daily Mail.
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