Articles Prince Harry claims are result of hacking ‘came from other royals and own interviews’

Newspaper stories that Prince Harry claims originated from phone hacking actually came from fellow members of the royal family and even his own interviews, the Supreme Court heard yesterday.

The Duke of Sussex is suing the publisher of the Daily Mirror, claiming he has been the victim of illegal information gathering, such as phone hacking.

But the publisher told the judge that many of the stories actually came from other royal or palace courtiers — and that one of the articles he complained about was based on an on-the-record interview Harry himself gave.

The paper denies hacking into Harry’s phone, setting the stage for a courtroom clash with the Duke, who will become the first senior British royal since 1890 to testify in court.

He is due to go to the witness stand in the case early next month to be questioned over his claims that he has been repeatedly hacked by Mirror Group Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and The People.

He was not in court yesterday, but his lawyer David Sherborne claimed he was a victim of “industrial-scale” hacking between 1995 and 2011. The judge was shown 33 articles allegedly from illegal information gathering.

But Andrew Green KC, on behalf of the publisher, told the court that ‘many came from information released by or on behalf of royal households or members of the royal family’, from freelance journalists or confidential sources ‘with extensive royal contacts’. Mr Green said that in one case a story complained about came from ‘an on-the-record interview given by the Duke of Sussex himself’.

Yesterday, the paper began the process by apologizing to Harry for a time when The People newspaper paid a private investigator to collect information about the prince’s behavior at Chinawhite, a famous nightclub in Soho, in 2004.

Mr Green added that the £75 fee paid “suggests there was little work involved” but that Harry, pictured, was “entitled to compensation for this incident” even though he didn’t actually have the item included in his claim. Harry says the alleged illegal activities caused him “enormous distress” and caused “an enormous amount of paranoia in my relationships.”

Pictured: Members of the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Place watching the flypast after Trooping the Color in June 2019 (file photo)

He claims that Mirror Group journalists even managed to book a hotel in Bazaruto, a small island off Mozambique, where he stayed with his then girlfriend, Chelsy Davy. Witnesses will be called to testify during the trial, including Omid Scobie, a journalist who wrote a gushing biography of Harry and Meghan. The prince is one of four plaintiffs in the case against the Spiegelgroep. The others are Coronation Street actors Nikki Sanderson and Michael Turner and comedian Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife Fiona Wightman.

The Mirror case is one of three lawsuits Harry has brought against British newspapers. He is suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, who denies all his claims, and the publisher of The Sun.

The last time a prince came to court was in the Baccarat libel case of 1890, when the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, testified about a card game he had played in which another player was accused of cheating.