Europe 1 with AFP 12:11 p.m., March 27, 2023

Prince Harry, who now lives with his wife Meghan and their children in the United States, made a surprise appearance Monday morning at the High Court in London where a hearing is held against the publisher of the "Daily Mail, Associated Newspaper (ANL)", accused by several celebrities of collecting information illegally.

Prince Harry made a surprise appearance Monday morning at the High Court in London where a hearing is being held against the publisher of the Daily Mail, Associated Newspaper (ANL), accused by several celebrities of collecting information illegally. Footage from Sky News showed the 38-year-old prince getting out of a minibus and entering the building where, in a hearing scheduled to last four days, the publisher of the Daily Mail is trying to thwart the lawsuits of King Charles' youngest son, singer Elton John, and actress Liz Hurley.

Harry's rare return to the UK

The surprise appearance in London of Prince Harry, who only exceptionally travels to the United Kingdom, comes just over a month before the coronation of the king on May 6. Exiled in the United States after leaving the monarchy with a bang in 2020, Harry and his wife Meghan were invited to the ceremony, but have not yet made it known publicly if they will honor the invitation.

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The return of the "Sussexes" to the United Kingdom to attend the coronation has been the subject of much speculation in the British media in recent months, after the couple's virulent attacks on the royal family. After a documentary aired on Netflix in December, Harry published in early January his controversial memoir entitled "The Deputy", in which he recounts his adolescence marked by drugs and alcohol and details the breakdown of his relationship with his father, King Charles III, and his brother William.

Illegal eavesdropping?

The king was originally scheduled to be absent from the UK on Monday and Tuesday for a state visit to France, which was postponed due to social sentiment and sometimes violent protests linked to President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform.

In the legal proceedings in London, the six plaintiffs accuse ANL of employing detectives to bug them, in their car or in their homes. When the procedure was announced in early October, the group had refuted "totally and unambiguously these grotesque defamations which seem to be nothing more than a planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Mail's headlines into the scandal of telephone tapping concerning 30-year-old articles".

The British tabloid press was shaken a decade ago by several scandals of illegal eavesdropping practiced in the early 2000s.