Prince Harry in UK court to give evidence against tabloid publisher

Prince Harry began giving evidence at London's high court on Tuesday in his lawsuit against a tabloid publisher whose titles he accuses of phone-hacking and other unlawful activities, the first senior royal to do so in more than a century.

Harry, the fifth-in-line to the throne, briefly smiled as he passed the phalanx of waiting photographers and camera crews when he arrived at the modern Rolls Building in central London ahead of the very rare court appearance by a royal.

The prince had failed to show up as expected on Monday for the trial where he and more than 100 others are suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, over allegations of widespread wrongdoing between 1991 and 2011.

However, the younger son of King Charles will on Tuesday and Wednesday face hours of cross-examination in the witness box from Andrew Green, MGN's lawyer, over 33 newspaper articles he says were based on information which had been unlawfully obtained.

It makes him the first senior British royal to give evidence for 130 years. He will be giving his evidence from the same witness box in Court 15 where singer Ed Sheeran and French actress Eva Green have both recently appeared in separate and unrelated cases.

Harry swore on the Bible and, before his cross-examination began, confirmed he should be addressed as “Your Royal Highness” in the first instance and that his personal preference was to be called “Prince Harry” afterwards.

The MGN trial began last month, with lawyers for Harry and the other claimants seeking to prove that unlawful information gathering was carried out with the knowledge and approval of senior editors and executives.

Harry is one of four test cases, and his specific allegations form the focus of the first three days of this week.

However, he did not appear on Monday, having only left the US, where he now lives with his American wife Meghan, the previous evening as it was his daughter Lilibet's birthday on Sunday. The judge, Timothy Fancourt, said he was surprised at his absence.

Harry's lawyer David Sherborne said on Monday the prince had been the subject of thousands of MGN stories since he was a young boy, and as such was a regular target of unlawful behaviour, with his late mother Princess Diana, also a victim of hacking.

Harry wanted to focus attention on the unlawful activities rather than because he has a “vendetta” against the press, Sherborne said.

MGN, now owned by Reach, did apologise at the start of the trial after admitting the Sunday People had unlawfully sought information about Harry on one occasion, and has previously admitted its titles were involved in phone-hacking, settling more than 600 say. But Green, MGN's lawyer, said there was no evidence Harry had ever been the victim of phone-hacking, let alone habitually as he claimed, and rejected he had been the victim of any further unlawful actions.

Buckingham Palace is likely to feature prominently in Harry's cross-examination, with MGN arguing some of the personal information involved had come from senior royal aides, including one of his father's former top officials.

In his memoir, Netflix documentary series and other TV interviews, the prince has repeatedly accused his family and their aides of colluding with tabloids to enhance their reputations at his expense.

The palace has not commented on those accusations.

Reuters