UK tabloids deny Prince Harry’s phone hacking claims, insisting stories came from legitimate sources as a nine-week High Court trial continues.
LONDON: Two UK tabloids accused of phone hacking and unlawful information gathering against Prince Harry and six other figures have insisted they used legitimate sources.
Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, began its defence on the second day of an anticipated nine-week High Court trial.
The publisher rejects claims it illegally intercepted voicemails, listened to calls, and deceptively obtained private information from Prince Harry, Sir Elton John, David Furnish, and four others.
Prince Harry, who attended court on Monday and Tuesday, may give evidence as early as Wednesday.
The seven claimants allege ANL paid private investigators implicated in other lawsuits to obtain unlawful information for dozens of stories.
The accusations cover a period from at least 1993 to 2018 in some instances.
Representing ANL, Antony White said the trial will show explanations for sourcing the more than 50 articles in question.
“Overall, it provides a compelling account of a pattern of legitimate sourcing of articles,” he added.
White argued the claims would require wholesale lying by a large number of journalists at the newspapers.
He described allegations about payments to private investigators as “clutching at straws in the wind”.
This is the third and final case brought by Prince Harry against a British newspaper publisher.
Harry has previously called it his “mission” to take on the tabloids “for the greater good”.
He has long blamed the media for his mother Princess Diana’s death in a 1997 Paris car crash.
Harry made history in 2023 by becoming the first senior British royal to testify in over a century during his successful claim against Mirror Group Newspapers.
Last year, he settled a case against Rupert Murdoch’s UK publisher, which agreed to pay “substantial damages” for privacy breaches.
Opening the claimants’ case on Monday, lawyer David Sherborne said he would show “clear and systematic use of unlawful gathering of information” at ANL.
Sherborne added that ANL “knew they had skeletons in their closet” and that years of “emphatic denials were not true”.
Concluding his opening statement Tuesday, Sherborne said damages would have to be significant if the claimants won the case.
