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Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource
London (CNN) — Prince Harry struggled to hold back his emotions as he wrapped up his evidence at a London court on Wednesday, as part of his lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail over allegations of unlawful information gathering, saying “they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery”.
The Duke of Sussex, 41, told London’s High Court he “wouldn’t have been able to complain” about the tabloid stories that are central to his claim at the time of publication “because of the institution I was in”.
Prince Harry returned from the United States to provide testimony for the civil case, which started on Monday and is expected to last nine weeks.
He is one of seven high-profile figures in the United Kingdom – including Elton John, David Furness and Elizabeth Hurley – accusing Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) of allegedly gathering information through unlawful practices such as tasking private investigators to engage in voicemail interception, phone tapping and “blagging” of sensitive private records through deception.
The tabloid publisher has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, insisting that its journalists reported their stories using legitimate sources. It also asserts that the group of plaintiffs brought the claims too late.
The duke arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice around 11 a.m. (6 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, smiling and waving to crowds that had gathered outside. He has attended proceedings over the past two days, sitting behind his legal team along with several other claimants, before becoming the first to testify – his second such court appearance in three years.
In a separate lawsuit in 2023, he became the first senior British royal to give evidence on a witness stand in more than 130 years.
The duke’s specific claim is based on 14 articles authored between 2001 and 2013, primarily written by two journalists, which caused him “great distress” and had “no meritorious public interest”, according to written submissions from his legal team. The duke alleges that those stories contained information that was gathered through nefarious tactics.
In his witness statement, Harry said he has “always had an uneasy relationship” with the press but “there was no alternative; I was conditioned to accept it”.
He said that the stories he has complained about are “part of an endless pursuit, a campaign, an obsession of having every aspect of my life under surveillance so they could get the run on their competitors and drive me paranoid beyond belief, isolating me, and probably wanting to drive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their papers”.
The duke also said that he brought the case because he was “determined to hold Associated accountable, for everyone’s sake” and that he believed his claim was “in the public’s interest”.
Royal denies friends would have leaked information
Under cross-examination, Harry at times engaged in tense exchanges with ANL’s lawyer Antony White, such as when he asked about whether some of the journalists who wrote stories might have been spending time with his social circle, which the barrister described as “leaky”.
White suggested that the reporters were attending the same events he was and, as a result, might have been able to obtain information for stories through those avenues, which the duke disputed.
“Having lived within this system my entire life… the kind of information that ends up in these articles is not the kind of thing that I would have been talking about,” Harry said from the witness box.
“I’m not friends with any of these journalists. I never have been,” he added.
White also suggested that Harry could have complained about these stories at the time of their publication but chose not to. Harry responded by saying he “wasn’t allowed to complain”, citing the royal family’s adage: “Never complain, never explain”.
As the duke concluded his evidence on Wednesday afternoon, he was visibly emotional as he spoke about the toll of pursuing the case against ANL, describing it as “a recurring traumatic experience”.
He said that he thought it was “fundamentally wrong to put all of us through this again when all we were asking for was an apology and some accountability”.
He continued, “It’s a horrible experience and the worst of it is that by taking a stand and talking about it here… they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery”.
In court on Tuesday, White said the group’s claims against the company were “threadbare” and argued that journalists working for ANL provide a “compelling account of a pattern of legitimate sourcing”.
He also said that journalists’ payments to private investigators, which were cited by the duke’s legal team, were “examples of clutching at straws in the wind and seeking to bind them together in a way that has no proper analytical foundation”.
The duke has long railed against Britain’s tabloid media and the tactics it has used to cover his life, engaging in a years-long battle with a number of publishers. In previous showdowns against the tabloid press, Harry successfully launched legal challenges against Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN) and Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), after which he received apologies, admissions of wrongdoing and damages.
