By Michael Holden and Sam Tobin
LONDON – Prince Harry said on Wednesday he would feel a sense of injustice if London’s High Court did not conclude he was a phone-hacking victim, as he completed more than eight hours giving evidence against a British tabloid newspaper group.
Harry, King Charles’ younger son, spent a day-and-a-half in the witness box being grilled over allegations he had been unlawfully targeted by Mirror Group Newspapers’ (MGN) titles for 15 years from 1996, when he was a child.
Asked by his lawyer David Sherborne about the experience of appearing in court in front of the world’s media, a clearly-emotional Harry exhaled deeply and replied: “It’s a lot.”
The prince and 100 others are suing MGN, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, over allegations of phone-hacking and unlawful information-gathering between 1991 and 2011. They claim senior editors and executives at MGN knew about and approved of the wrongdoing.
The fifth-in-line to the throne had been selected as one of four test cases leading to him becoming the first senior British royal to appear in a witness box for more than 130 years on Tuesday. The last time was in 1891 when the future Edward VII was a witness in a slander trial.
When Harry returned on Wednesday, he was again focused and softly spoken, but more combative during sometimes testy exchanges with Andrew Green, MGN’s lawyer.
“If the court were to find that you were never hacked by any MGN journalist, would you be relieved or would you be disappointed?” Green asked the prince.
Harry replied: “I believe phone-hacking was on an industrial scale across at least three of the papers at the time and that is beyond doubt.
“To have a decision against me and any other people that come behind me with their claims, given that Mirror Group have accepted hacking, … yes, I would feel some injustice,” he said.
In response to Green’s suggestion that Harry wanted to have been a victim, the prince replied: “Nobody wants to be phone hacked.”
