Prince Harry attended for the second day in a row this Tuesday at a hearing at the High Court in London. Along with several celebrities, he has taken legal action against Associated Newspaper (ANL), publisher of the Daily Mail, accused of illegally gathering information. He also accuses the British royal family of having withheld information from him about telephone tapping carried out by British tabloids.
In his witness statement signed on February 24, and unveiled on Tuesday, Harry evokes his “difficult relationship with the press” since the death of his mother Diana but explains that “for a member of the institution, politics was never complain, never explain (Never complain, never explain)”. He says the royal family dissuaded him from suing the press because “it could open a Pandora’s box.” “There is no doubt that the (royal) institution has long withheld information about phone hacking from me, and this only became clear in recent years when I filed my own complaint. »
Harry, who only travels to the UK exceptionally, made a surprise visit to London to attend the hearing at which ANL is trying to defeat the lawsuits brought by the king’s son, but also singer Elton John or the actress Liz Hurley. The six plaintiffs accuse ANL of employing detectives to wiretap them.
Harry and Meghan invited to the coronation of Charles III
The group refuted “totally and without ambiguity these grotesque defamations” which according to him seek to “draw the titles of the Mail into the scandal of telephone tapping over 30-year-old articles”. The British tabloid press was shaken about ten years ago by several scandals of illegal wiretapping practiced from the beginning of the 2000s.
Harry’s visit to the UK comes just over a month before the king’s coronation on May 6. Exiled to the United States after crashing out of the monarchy in 2020, Harry and his wife Meghan have been invited to the ceremony but have not yet publicly announced whether they will honor the invitation.
After a documentary aired on Netflix in December, Harry released his controversial memoir ‘The Substitute’ in early January, in which he details his broken relationship with his father and brother William.