Tracking devices hidden in the cars of a friend or ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy; and messages that disappeared into thin air for years on his mobile phones, as happens among the side effects produced by certain telephone interception techniques. They are the rabbits pulled out of the cylinder in the form of heavy clues - if not certain evidence - by Prince Harry, second son of King Charles, in the final bars of the historic river-deposition that saw him yesterday for about six hours and today for another three on the witness stand at the High Court of London: as part of the last episode of his judicial crusades against the persecution and violations of privacy attributed to the tabloids of the British popular-tabloid press.
The match this time is with the Mirror Group Newspapers (Mgn), publishing holding owner of the homonymous newspaper, and concerns yet another alleged case of illegal intrusions into the private lives of several VIPs, dating back to a period between 1995 and 2011. In a context not without risks and embarrassment for the rest of the House of Windsor, marked as it is by the first appearance in court after over a century of a royal of the status of the Duke of Sussex as heads under oath.
A challenge to the rules of caution, interests and quiet life of the dynasty that yesterday Harry - fifth, despite the tear of 2020 from the Royal Family and the move to the US with his wife Meghan Markle, in the line of succession to the throne of his father Charles III - had justified as necessary for both objective and subjective reasons: pointing the finger both at the "absolutely vile" hunt suffered since childhood with chases and ferocious gossip by the tabloids, as well as on the "blood-stained" hands (the blood of his mother Diana and not only) of certain journalism; Not without going so far as to evoke incestuous relations between the media and the government, to the detriment of the reputation of both. And that today he also explained as a forced maneuver, to try to "stop the hatred still directed against me and my wife" Meghan.
Maneuver conducted with an increasingly convinced attitude in the two days of question and answer with the defense lawyer of MGN, Andrew Green, who exhausted him in a relentless cross-examination on the details of his reconstructions, to highlight any contradiction or hesitation. And concluded, before leaving the court to return to California, with the short tail of questions from his lawyer, David Sherborne: conceived as a cue to allow him to better argue the suspicions and explicitly deny having denounced the newspaper on the basis of mere "conjecture" or only the precedents already proven in court against the tabloids in past years compared to other events.
Here then is the underlining of the supposed concrete clues, destined to be deepened in the following of the hearings and the testimonies of the leaders of the Mirror who insist on denying everything or almost everything. Clues that are certainly not enough for the detractors of the rebel prince, starting with many establishment royal correspondents and a large majority of public opinion in the Kingdom (concentrated above all in the adult, elderly and white population). But they suggest caution on the predictions of an image disaster announced for Harry to Dominic Casciani, legal analyst of the BBC: convinced that the duke (who has the burden of proof), while not actually having a full-blown "smoking gun", has been able to corroborate at least the accusations with concrete elements that the judge Timothy Fancourt will not be able to examine. And in any case, it does not appear "in any way" out of the game at the start on the results of this procedure, as of those initiated separately, in parallel, against other sensationalist newspapers 'enemies' such as Murdoch's Sun or the Mail.
