On Monday, both Prince Harry and John made a surprise appearance at London's High Court to attend the hearing against ANL, which is accused of years of alleged phone-tapping and privacy breaches.
According to the group's lawyer David Sherborne, his clients were victims of "numerous unlawful acts" carried out by journalists or private investigators working on behalf of the papers.
The lawsuit alleges that the papers used unlawful means to obtain stories about Prince Harry from at least early 2001 until at least late 2013. Additionally, Prince Harry accused the papers of targeting his brother, Prince William, and the mother of William's wife, Kate Middleton.
The lawsuit claims that the papers sought information about Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend's private flight details, hacked mobile phone voicemail messages, and bugged the landlines of his friends. These actions had severe consequences, as they meant that Prince Harry was "largely deprived of important aspects of his teenage years" and caused him to lose friends as "everyone became a 'suspect'."
The unlawful attempts to find out details of the royal's private travel plans were also a significant security risk "which was as grossly irresponsible as it was dangerous."
In court submissions, ANL denied the allegations and said that the claims were based on inference rather than evidence. The publisher strongly denies any unlawful information gathering by its journalists.
