The British high court began on Wednesday the testimony in the trial of Prince Harry, fifth in the line of succession to the throne, against the tabloid group The Mirror on the accusation of having intercepted his phone and listened to his private messages between 1997 and 2011. Harry got his first victory.
The most dramatic claim the judges heard is that the stories published by the British tabloids against Harry "came from the Royal Family."
"The tabloid stories about the Duke of Sussex came from other members of the royal family," the high court was told on Wednesday.
A denunciation that Harry made in his autobiography Spare, where he accused the current Queen Camilla, his stepmother, of leaking material about Harry to the press to accelerate his media rehabilitation, marry his father and become queen.
The current King Charles III had asked his youngest son not to sue the tabloids in 2019. He also targeted the courtiers and spin doctors of the palace, who lied about him to favor the image of the other Royals.
Piers Morgan was the editor
The Duke of Sussex has claimed he was the victim of illegal information gathering by the Daily Mirror.
Piers Morgan. Photo: AP
At the time its editor was Piers Morgan, former editor of The Sun and an avowed enemy of Harry and Meghan, an Eton graduate.
The Mirror spent £10 million "listening to the king, Diana and other celebrities", lawyers said in London's high court on Wednesday.
Investigators paid 114 times in relation to Prince Harry between 1997 and 2011, according to court documents.
They show that the Mirror paid for information about King Charles six times between May 2000 and October 2002 and seven payments linked to Princess Diana between May 1996 and September 1999.
Suspicious calls were made to mobile phones belonging to Princess of Wales Chelsy Davy and Princess Diana's mother, Frances Shand Kydd, Prince Harry said in his legal battle with Mirror Group Newspapers.
All heard
Kate, Harry and Meghan Markle. Photo: AP
In a witness statement filed with the High Court, the Duke of Sussex lists 313 "highly suspicious" calls made to friends, family and associates between 2003 and 2011.
Seven of the calls were made to phones belonging to his then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy between 2007 and 2009. One was made to the phone of Shand Kydd, mother of Princess Diana in 2003, two were made to the phone of the Princess of Wales in 2004 and 2010 and 22 were made to her then private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton between 2003 and 2005.
The vast majority of calls, 270 in total, were made to the Prince's then-communications secretary, Paddy Harverson, between 2004 and 2011. Others who were allegedly targeted include the Prince's friends, Guy Pelly and Jamie Murray Wells, and former military aide-de-camp Mark Dyer.
Chelsy Davy, Harry's ex-girlfriend, was also spied on. Photo: AP
Through his lawyers, Prince Harry claims he was the victim of illegal information gathering by the editor of the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2011. It says the king and his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, were also targeted, as were ex-girlfriends, leading to "huge bouts of depression and paranoia".
"Apologies without reservation"
Andrew Green QC, representing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), told the court that the publisher "apologises unreservedly" for using a private investigator for a story about Harry. But he denies that 28 of a sample of 33 articles about the duke presented at trial involved illegal activities.
Harry said MGN's activities led his Zimbabwean ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy to decide that "real life wasn't for her."
Chelsy Davy and Harry in April 2007. Photo: AFP
"Many came from information disclosed by or on behalf of royal houses or members of the Royal Family," Green said in a written statement. One of the articles came from an "official interview given by Harry."
The publisher admitted that The People paid £75 to a private investigator to gather information about Harry's conduct at Chinawhite, a celebrity nightclub in Soho, central London, in February 2004.
Attorney Green said the publisher doesn't know what information was collected. But the newspaper published an article that "recalls a woman Harry spent time with at Chinawhite."
Right to compensation
Harry is entitled to compensation for this incident. But "in particular, it does not claim in relation to this article. So it is not alleged that this instruction led to the publication of his private information," he added.
MGN also said the evidence "deserves compensation."
The publisher added, "MGN unreservedly apologizes for all such UIG cases and assures plaintiffs that such conduct will never be repeated."
The statements are part of the publisher's defense of claims filed by Harry and others about the alleged illegal collection of information in MGN titles.
On behalf of the editor, Andrew Green QC said in written arguments that he denied allegations of voicemail interception in the cases examined during the trial.
Green also said some of the challenges he faces have been pushed beyond a legal time limit.
"This apology is not made with the tactical objective of harm reduction. MGN accepts that an apology at this stage will not have that effect. But it is done because such conduct should never have occurred," he added.
Harry claims the alleged illegal activities caused him "great distress" and "presented very real safety concerns. Not only for me but also for everyone around me." They also created "a great deal of paranoia" in their relationships, the court heard.
He lost his girlfriend and his friends
Given the spread of his intimacies and the climate that was lived in his house with his mother, Princess Diana and his father after the divorce, Harry believed that it was his friends who leaked information. He lost them.
Harry, his girlfriend and his brother William, during a recital at Wembley. Photo: AFP
He said MGN journalists even managed to book a hotel on Bazaruto, a small, paradise island off the coast of Mozambique, where Harry was staying with his then-girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, daughter of a Zimbabwean millionaire.
MGN's activities "led Ms. Davy to make the decision that 'a real life was not for her,' which was 'incredibly upsetting' to him at the time," the court heard.
"They also made their circle of friends get smaller and smaller. Meaning the friendships were completely lost unnecessarily and led to 'huge bouts of depression and paranoia'," the court was told.
Harry accuses his family of covering up piracy
Prince Harry accused the royal family of covering up phone hacking. He tried to be persuaded by courtiers and his own father not to sue the tabloids.
David Sherborne, the duke's lawyer, claimed Harry and other celebrities were victims of illegal, "industrial-scale" activities between 1991 and 2011 in the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People.
By 1995, he said, the Royal Family had become big news for tabloids, "with continued interest during the now-king's divorce from his then-wife Diana, Princess of Wales, and her death in 1997."
Sherborne told the court: "We all remember the images of Harry walking behind his mother's coffin. " From that point on, as a schoolboy and from his career in the military and as a young man, he was subject, it was clear, to the most intrusive methods of obtaining his personal information."
Witnesses
Omid Scobie, co-author of Finding Freedom, a book about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, claims that when he was a journalism student, he spent a week in the entertainment newsroom of The People.
There he "received a list of mobile phone numbers and a verbal description, of how to listen to voice messages, as if it were a routine newsgathering technique."
He also told the court that while working on the Daily Mirror's 3AM entertainment column, "the paper's then-editor, Piers Morgan, asked how sure they were about a story relating to Kylie Minogue and her boyfriend, James Gooding," the court heard.
He was "told the information came from voicemails," said Scobie, who is the unofficial spokesman for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Tony Blair's former director of strategic communications, was working as a journalist for the Guardian in 2002 when he went out to eat Chinese food with Piers Morgan at the Labour Party Conference, the court heard.
He claimed Morgan showed him how to hack a mobile voicemail to explain how the Daily Mirror got the story about the affair between England's then-football manager, Sven Goran-Eriksson, and TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson.
Sherborne said the illegal collection of information was covered up by executives such as Sly Bailey, then chief executive of Trinity Mirror.
Harry to testify in June
The hearing is scheduled to last seven weeks, with Prince Harry scheduled to testify from the witness dock in June. It will be the first time a member of the Royal Family has testified in court.
A spokesman for Mirror MGN Group said: "Where historical wrongdoing has occurred, we have admitted, take full responsibility and apologise unreservedly. But we will vigorously defend ourselves against allegations of wrongdoing in which our journalists acted lawfully."
"MGN is now part of a very different company. We are committed to acting with integrity and our goal in this trial is to enable both the company and our journalists to overcome the events that took place many years ago," they said.
Paris, correspondent
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