Harry blames hacking ‘for Press stories that came from other royals’

NEWSPAPER stories that Prince Harry claims are from phone hacking actually came from fellow members of the Royal Family and even his own interviews, the High Court heard yesterday.

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

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

The newspaper denies hacking Harry’s phone, setting the scene for a courtroom clash with the duke, who will become the first senior British royal since 1890 to give evidence in a court.

He is due to take to the witness box in the case early next month to be questioned about his claims he was repeatedly hacked by Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and The People.

He was not in court yesterday but his lawyer David Sherborne claimed he was the victim of ‘industrial- scale’ hacking from 1995 to 2011. The judge has been shown 33 articles which are said to have come from unlawful information gathering.

But Andrew Green KC, for the publisher, told the court that ‘many came from information disclosed 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 in one case a story complained about came from ‘an on-the-record interview given by the Duke of Sussex himself’.

Yesterday the newspaper started the trial by offering an apology to Harry for one occasion when The People newspaper did pay a private investigator to gather information about the prince’s conduct at Chinawhite, a celebrity nightclub in Soho, in 2004.

Mr Green added the £75 fee paid ‘ suggests little work was involved’ but that Harry, pictured, was ‘entitled to compensation for this incident’, even though he had not actually included the article in his claim. Harry says the alleged unlawful activities caused him ‘huge distress’ and created ‘a huge amount of paranoia in my relationships’. He claims Mirror Group journalists even managed to book into a hotel in Bazaruto, a small island off Mozambique, where he was staying with his then girlfriend, Chelsy Davy. During the case, witnesses called to give evidence will include Omid Scobie, a journalist who wrote a gushing biography of Harry and Meghan. The prince is one of four claimants in the case against the Mirror Group. 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 High Court actions Harry is bringing against UK newspapers. He is suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, which denies all his claims, and the publisher of The Sun.

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

‘A huge amount of paranoia’