Prince Harry has reached an agreement to end remaining prosecutions for illicit information gathering against the publisher of the tabloid Daily Mirror, whom he convicted in December of hacking telephone messages, his lawyer David Sherborne announced on Friday.
This agreement covers 115 articles on which the courts have not yet ruled.
According to the lawyer, the publisher MGN agreed to pay a “substantial sum” to the youngest son of King Charles III and to pay all legal costs.
During a hearing at the High Court in London, without revealing the total amount of the agreement, David Sherborne mentioned an initial provision of 400,000 pounds sterling (468,000 euros).
“After our victory in December, the Mirror group finally acceded to the rest of my demands, which would have required two more trials,” Prince Harry said through his lawyer.
He once again attacked the former editor-in-chief of the Mirror, Piers Morgan, before saying: “our mission continues”, “I believe in the positive change it will bring for all of us”.
“This is why I started this and what I will continue to do until the end,” he said.
Voicemail hacking
On December 15, the High Court of London ruled in favor of Prince Harry and ordered MGN to pay him 140,600 pounds sterling (164,500 euros) in damages.
The judge estimated that 15 of the 33 disputed articles retained in the procedure - published between 1996 and 2009 - were the result of hacking into the voicemail boxes of the Duke of Sussex or his entourage as well as other illicit processes.
He estimated that Prince Harry's mobile phone messaging had been hacked "to a modest extent".
The magistrate ruled that the group's titles had massively hacked into the voicemails of celebrities between 2006 and 2011, including while a public inquiry into the behavior of the British press was taking place.
An eight-hour testimony
At the start of the trial, the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) group – which in addition to the Daily Mirror daily publishes Sunday Mirror and Sunday People – presented an “unreserved” apology, recognizing “some evidence” of illegal collection of information.
Prince Harry testified for eight hours spread over two days of hearings in June.
It was the first appearance of a member of the royal family at the bar since that of the future Edward VII in 1891 for a libel trial.
Prince Harry, seen in London this week for a visit to his father Charles III, suffering from a “form of cancer”, has initiated several legal proceedings targeting the methods of certain British media in the coverage of his actions, notably during her youth.
Exiled in the United States, at odds with the British royal family, the Duke of Sussex has often expressed his resentment towards the tabloid press.
He holds them particularly responsible for the death of his mother, Lady Diana, killed in a car accident in Paris.