Clutching a Bible in one hand, Harry was sworn in at the High Court in London, where he is pursuing a legal case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror. Prior to this, he arrived at the court in a black SUV and passed through a crowd of photographers and TV cameras to enter the modern courtroom.
Harry alleges that the Mirror publisher employed unlawful tactics on a large scale to obtain exclusive stories. He anticipates facing extensive cross-examination by the defense lawyer representing Mirror Group Newspapers, who is contesting the allegations.
"It's not about a specific article, but rather all of the articles," Harry explained. "Each and every article has caused me distress." Seated in the witness box, dressed in a dark suit and tie, he conveyed to Andrew Green, the attorney representing Mirror Group, that he has faced hostility from the press since his birth. He accused the tabloids of playing a detrimental role in his upbringing.
However, Harry was promptly challenged about his inability to recall the specific articles he was referring to. Green questioned how these articles could have caused him distress if he couldn't remember reading them at the time.
"It's not about a specific article, but rather all of the articles," he reiterated. "Each and every article has caused me distress."
Green pressed him to provide evidence of phone hacking in relation to particular articles, to which Harry responded that he would need to ask the journalist who wrote them. He repeatedly expressed his suspicion regarding the manner in which information was obtained.
He also found it suspicious that some journalists had connections to hacking or had submitted invoices to third parties, including private investigators known for their intrusive methods, around the time the articles were published.
When Green inquired about how reporters could have hacked his phone for an article about his 12th birthday, a time when Harry admitted he did not have a mobile phone, he suggested that they might have hacked his mother's phone instead, referring to the late Princess Diana.
"That's just speculation on your part," Green countered.
In the same article, Green highlighted an obvious reference to Harry struggling with his parents' divorce. "Like most children, I think, yes," Harry acknowledged.
However, the prince maintained that it was illegitimate to report such information and that "the methods by which it was obtained seem incredibly suspicious."
Green then pointed out that Harry's mother had previously made public comments to reporters about the challenges her children faced after the divorce.
At 38 years old, Prince Harry is the first senior British royal since the 19th century to be questioned in court. An ancestor of his, the future King Edward VII, appeared as a witness in a trial related to a gambling scandal in 1891.
Harry has made it his mission to hold the U.K. media accountable for what he perceives as their relentless pursuit of him and his family.
Presenting the prince's case in court on Monday, his lawyer, David Sherborne, asserted that British newspapers have employed hacking and covert operations from Harry's childhood to extract snippets of information that could be turned into attention-grabbing headlines.
According to the lawyer representing Prince Harry, stories about him were highly sought-after by newspapers, resulting in approximately 2,500 articles covering various aspects of his life from 1996 to 2011. These articles touched on topics ranging from school injuries to his experimentation with drugs like marijuana and cocaine, as well as his romantic relationships and their ups and downs.
The lawyer stated that nothing was off-limits or considered sacred by the tabloids. In a written witness statement released on Tuesday, Harry expressed the feeling that the tabloid press saw him as their absolute possession. He stated, "I genuinely feel that in every relationship I've ever had - whether with friends, girlfriends, family, or in the army - there has always been a third party involved, namely the tabloid press."
During the early 2000s, hacking, which involved guessing or using default security codes to access celebrities' voicemail messages, was prevalent in British tabloids. The revelation in 2011 that the News of the World had hacked the phone of a murdered 13-year-old girl led to an existential crisis for the industry. Rupert Murdoch, the owner, shut down the paper, and several executives faced criminal trials as a result.
Mirror Group has already paid over £100 million ($125 million) to settle numerous claims related to unlawful information gathering and issued an apology to phone hacking victims in 2015. However, the newspaper denies or has not admitted to any of Harry's claims, which pertain to 33 published articles.
The defense lawyer, Green, stated on Monday that there was simply no evidence supporting the notion that Prince Harry was hacked, let alone on a regular basis. He plans to question Harry for a day and a half.
Harry was expected to be present in court on Monday for the start of the hacking case, which is the first of several lawsuits he has filed against the media to go to a full trial. However, he was absent as he had flown from Los Angeles after celebrating his daughter Lilibet's second birthday the day before, as explained by his lawyer, Sherborne. Judge Timothy Fancourt expressed surprise at Harry's absence, noting that he had instructed him to be prepared to testify.
Harry's anger toward the U.K. press, and at times his own royal relatives for what he perceives as their collusion with the media, is evident in his memoir, "Spare," as well as in interviews with Oprah Winfrey and others. He holds the paparazzi responsible for his mother Princess Diana's fatal car crash and has stated that harassment and intrusion by the U.K. press, including allegedly racist articles, led him and his wife Meghan to leave royal life behind and seek refuge in the United States in 2020.
While Harry's recent media endeavors, including his memoir, have aimed to regain control of his life's narrative, which has been heavily influenced by the media, he has no such control during cross-examination in a courtroom filled with reporters diligently recording his every word.
