"They made my wife's life miserable." Prince Harry testified at London's High Court in the wiretapping case.
Prince Harry arrived at London's High Court to testify in his case against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of British tabloids The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. In court, he stated that his wife Meghan Markle's "royal" years had been "total torture" for her due to tabloid publications.
"They (the tabloids – Ed.) have made my wife's life a living hell and continue to persecute me," the 41-year-old prince said (quoted by The New York Times). According to eyewitnesses, at this point the prince became emotional and allegedly even seemed close to tears.
During questioning, Harry denied the suggestion that his inner circle could have been the source of the scandalous press reports about him and Markle. "Having lived my whole life in this system... I would never talk about what ended up in those articles," CNN quoted him as saying. He also accused journalists of "inventing quotes to create a particular version of events."
The defense attorney suggested that Harry could have filed a lawsuit over the articles immediately after their publication, but chose not to. He responded by declaring that he was "not allowed to complain."
Prince Harry has returned from the United States, where he has lived in recent years with his wife and children, to testify in a civil case expected to last nine weeks. His lawsuit concerns 14 articles published in The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, which he claims were the result of illegal information gathering. One of them, published in July 2006 under the headline "May She Rest in Peace," contained details of his "confidential discussions" with his older brother, Prince William, about publishing photos of their mother, Princess Diana, dying after a car accident, in Italian media.
Another article published earlier that year revealed details of Harry's relationship with his then-girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, and her attitude toward his joining the British Army. The prince claimed that these details, including his calling Ms. Davy "from a shop, choosing a suit," could only have been obtained through wiretaps. In his written statement, Harry said the article had "severely strained" their relationship and created "paranoia and mistrust."
In a written witness statement filed in court, Harry said he had a "difficult relationship" with the press following the death of his mother, Princess Diana, during a paparazzi pursuit in 1997, but he had "gotten used to accepting" the constant media coverage due to his role in the case. "Every time I got on a plane or in a car, I always expected to be followed," he said, adding that he was "surveilled 24/7."
In the lawsuit, he also claimed the stories he complained about were "part of a never-ending pursuit, a campaign, an obsession to monitor every aspect of his life in order to outpace the competition, to drive him paranoid, to isolate him, and likely to drive him to drugs and alcohol in order to sell more of his newspapers."
Harry is one of seven public figures accusing ANL of allegedly illegally collecting information through methods such as using private investigators to intercept voicemails, wiretapping, and "tricking" them into revealing sensitive personal information. The other plaintiffs include Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley.
The tabloid publisher has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, insisting its journalists wrote their articles using legitimate sources. It also claims that the plaintiffs filed their lawsuits after the statute of limitations expired.
The case is one of several legal battles Harry has been facing since 2020, when he and Meghan Markle stepped back from their royal duties and left the UK.
Last January, Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers acknowledged for the first time the wrongdoing of private investigators working for The Sun and offered the prince a "full and unreserved apology," paying him £10 million in compensation for phone hacking, surveillance, and misuse of personal information. A year earlier, Harry won a substantial settlement from Mirror Group Newspapers for phone hacking at the Daily Mirror.
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