• United Kingdom Prince Harry does not appear before the British Justice and irritates the judge who presides over his complaint against the media
  • UK Daily Mirror apologizes to Prince Harry for spying on him and points to royal family as source of information about him

Prince Harry (38) has launched a harsh attack on the British tabloids. Harry has denounced the "vile and unjustified conduct" of the popular press and has demanded responsibility for the damage caused throughout his life and that of the hundred complainants who accompany him in the civil lawsuit against the Mirror Group of Newspapers (MGN) for alleged criminal activity in obtaining personal and confidential information, which is being settled in London.

The Duke of Sussex entered unhinged ground by taking a seat in the witness cubicle of Room 15 of the High Court of England and Wales. He broke with modern monarchical tradition and became the first member of the British royal family to testify in a court case in over a hundred years.

The intense interrogation, which began on Tuesday morning and was due to conclude on Wednesday, coincides with a semi-official visit by his father, King Charles III, to Romania, where he maintains several recreational residences.

Father and son faced their respective and very opposite roles alone. Queen Camilla took a few days off at her private estate in southwest England, while the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan, decided not to travel to England and remained in the United States in the care of the two little ones, Archie and Lilibet.

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Prince Harry steps into the ring in his battle against the British tabloids

  • Writing: MARÍA SIERRA Londres

Prince Harry steps into the ring in his battle against the British tabloids

"How much blood will they keep spilling with their fingers at the keyboard before anyone stops all this madness?" Questioned by Andrew Green, lawyer for the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People tabloids, the Duke of Sussex said he was referring to "directors and journalists responsible for bringing a lot of pain, anguish and sometimes inadvertently blood." He refrained, however, from identifying any professional among the targets of the powerful accusation.

For Harry, oral testimony proved an uncomfortable trip into the past. The legal dispute in his case centers on 33 articles – among more than a thousand denounced by his legal team – published in MGN's tabloids, between 1991 and 1996, which address different aspects of his career and personal activities. They reveal, among other intimacies, feelings of his reaction to the divorce of his parents, Princess Diana and now King Charles, disagreements with his brother William, his ill-fated courtship with the South African Chelsy Davy, drug use and bodily injury in sporting events.

He declined to confirm whether he read the articles at the time – "I do not remember" and it would be "speculating" on actions of twenty years ago, he justified – but affirmed that the personal impact was negative as a whole, enhancing attacks of paranoia, depression and suspicion of his circle of family, friends and collaborators.

He recalled, therefore, general episodes of intrusion by sensationalist media and affirmed that he feels the impact of their interest and hostility from the cradle. "I've been under pressure from the press all my life, until today," he said.

Harry carries since childhood with the caricature that the tabloids project of him of the "spare", the substitute relegated to being "in the shadow" of the firstborn and future king, as he has titled his recent memoirs. In his testimony he accuses the yellow press of pigeonholing him as the "fool", the "cheat", the "irresponsible drug addict" and other labels that "sell as many newspapers as possible".

In the four long hours of affidavit, he deepened his suspicions that the selected articles were written from data obtained with illicit methods, either interference of voice messages or hiring detectives skilled in the "dark arts", as has subsequently been shown. And he often went directly to the judge to emphasize his position that strong competition in the popular sector forced journalists to produce angles and content of stories generated by rival newspapers, even if they contained data confirmed by the royal houses.

MGN's defense will continue its questioning of Harry on Wednesday with the aim of analyzing the content and provenance of the sources of each of the 33 articles in dispute.

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