Image: (APA/AFP/POOL/ANDY STENNING)
The 38-year-old royal and other celebrities accuse the former bosses of the tabloids “The Mirror”, “The Sunday Mirror” and “Sunday People” to have known about illegal methods such as intercepting cell phone voice messages and stealing medical data.
Was management involved?
The defendant is the publisher of the three newspapers, Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). The publisher had already partially admitted that the celebrities were being spied on by journalists and private detectives. Individual journalists were prosecuted. Now the question is whether and how the management level was involved in the illegal activities.
Plaintiff attorney David Sherborne began reading the complaint on Wednesday. Since 1995, Prince Harry has been the target of “the most abusive methods of obtaining private information,” Sherborne said, speaking of “appalling” practices. The process is to be conducted on the basis of several individual cases as examples for a class action lawsuit by many other plaintiffs.
Publisher apologized
The publisher apologized at the start of the process in a written submission for the spying and admitted that Prince Harry was entitled to compensation. However, defendant attorney Andrew Green rejected individual cases of allegedly intercepted voice messages. In addition, the lawsuit comes too late.
But Prince Harry is also about the principle. In addition to celebrities, victims of sensational crimes and their relatives have also become the target of illegal research methods. The Duke of Sussex’s case highlights what has happened to many other lesser-known individuals, Sherborne said, adding, “That’s why he decided to bring the lawsuit.”
Spying on “industrial scale”
The spying “had taken place on an industrial scale in all three newspapers,” continued the star lawyer, who had already represented Prince Harry in other proceedings. Invoices proved that private detectives were commissioned and paid for by various departments within the editorial offices. The legal department and the board of directors were also aware of the events. He spoke of a “flood of breaches of the law” authorized by senior editors.
The process takes seven weeks
The other side wants to set out its arguments on Friday, before witness questioning begins next week. The trial is scheduled to last seven weeks. It is expected that the younger son of King Charles III. (74) will take the witness stand himself in June. The focus of the proceedings is likely to be the former editor-in-chief of “Mirror”, Piers Morgan, who ran the paper from 1995 to 2004. Morgan had distinguished himself in recent years as a sharp critic of Harry’s wife Meghan (41). He rejects the allegations in the current proceedings.
Several lawsuits against the boulevard
The trial is just one of several that Prince Harry is conducting in the UK against the tabloid media known as the “Tabloid Press”. In March, he surprisingly appeared as a witness himself in proceedings against the publisher of the newspapers “Daily Mail” and “Mail on Sunday”, Associated Newspapers Limited. Harry has also initiated proceedings against the publishers of the newspapers “Sun” and the now discontinued “News Group Newspapers” because of similar allegations.
Source: Nachrichten
