LONDON (AP) – Prince Harry’s phone hacking trial against the publisher of the Daily Mirror kicked off without him present in court – and the judge was not happy.
Harry’s lawyer said the Duke of Sussex would be unavailable to testify after opening statements because he’d taken a flight from Los Angeles, United States (US) on Sunday after the birthday of his two-year-old daughter, Lilibet.
“I’m a little surprised,” Justice Timothy Fancourt said, noting he had directed Harry to be in court for the first day of his case.
Mirror Group Newspaper’s lawyer Andrew Green, said he was “deeply troubled” by Harry’s absence on the trial’s opening day.
Harry was scheduled to testify today, but his lawyer was told last week the duke should attend yesterday’s proceedings in London’s High Court in case the opening statements concluded before the end of the day.
The case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror is the first of the prince’s several lawsuits against the media to go to trial, and one of three alleging tabloid publishers unlawfully snooped on him in their cutthroat competition for scoops on the royal family.
Harry, 38, will be the first member of the British royal family in more than a century to testify in court. He is expected to describe his anguish and anger over being hounded by the media throughout his life, and its impact on those around him.
He has blamed paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother Princess Diana, and said harassment and intrusion by the United Kingdom (UK) press, including allegedly racist articles, led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the US in 2020 and leave royal life behind.
The articles at issue in the trial date back to his 12th birthday, in 1996, when the Mirror reported Harry was feeling “badly” about the divorce of his mother and father, now King Charles III.
Harry said in court documents that ongoing tabloid reports made him wonder whom he could trust as he feared friends and associates were betraying him by leaking information to the newspapers. His circle of friends grew smaller, and he suffered “huge bouts of depression and paranoia.” Relationships fell apart as the women in his life – and even their family members – were “dragged into the chaos.”
He said he later discovered that the source wasn’t disloyal friends but aggressive journalists and the private investigators they hired to eavesdrop on voicemails and track him to locations as remote as Argentina and an island off Mozambique.
Mirror Group Newspapers said it didn’t hack Harry’s phone and its articles were based on legitimate reporting techniques. The publisher admitted and apologised for hiring a private eye to dig up dirt on one of Harry’s nights out at a restaurant.
Phone hacking to listen in on celebrities’ cell phone voice messages was widespread at British tabloids in the early years of this century.
