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Prince Harry on his way to court: first royal cross-examined in more than a hundred years

Photo: Carl Court / Getty Images

Prince Harry had to face the lawyer's questions again on the second day of the cross-examination trial against the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) – and in turn decisively attacked the media group.

MGN lawyer Andrew Green said there was no cell phone data to suggest Harry had been a victim of phone hacking. "If the court found that your phone was never hacked by an MGN journalist, would you be relieved or disappointed?" asked Green. "That would be pure speculation," said Harry. He believes the phone hacking was carried out on a large scale at at least three of the newspapers.

Verdict expected later in the year

He would feel that any other decision would be unfair, according to the royal. Then Green said, "So you want your phone to be hacked!" The son of King Charles III replied: "Nobody wants their phone to be hacked."

The first cross-examination of a British royal in more than a hundred years is expected to end on Wednesday. The trial, which is being conducted as a class action lawsuit for damages on behalf of Harry and three other celebrities, is scheduled to last until the end of June. A verdict is not expected until later in the year.

On the basis of 33 press articles from the MGN newspapers »Daily Mirror«, »Sunday Mirror« and »People« from 1996 to 2009, Prince Harry wants to show that illegally obtained information was used in reporting on him. For example, by listening to mailbox messages from his cell phone, as he suspects. The alleged spying had inflicted severe mental suffering on him, strained friendships and relationships.

It is undisputed that illegal information gathering was commonplace in the papers of the »Mirror« publishing house. But whether Harry can prove this in individual cases is still unclear.

Re-enactments by the media

Harry has long had a broken relationship with the tabloid media. Among other things, he blames them for the death of his mother Diana, who died in a traffic accident in 1997 during a chase with photographers in Paris.

To this day, he and his wife Duchess Meghan say they are repeatedly confronted with re-enactments by the media. This was one of the reasons why the two withdrew from the front ranks of the British royal family in 2020 and relocated to California.

bbr/dpa/AFP/Reuters