In one of the major trials of the year in the United Kingdom, Prince Harry, 38, appeared on Tuesday June 6 as the main plaintiff before the High Court of Justice of England, in the heart of London, in the as part of proceedings he brought against MGN, the publisher of the DailyMirror, one of the main British tabloids. The youngest son of King Charles III, fifth in the order of succession, accuses the newspaper of having, between the mid-1990s and 2010, regularly resorted to telephone tapping to feed articles exposing his private life unceremoniously. teenager then young man.
Daily actions “affected every aspect of my life,” the prince said in a written statement, filed with the court before the start of the hearing. These actions altered his social relationships, surrounding them with a “huge paranoia” added the royal complainer: “I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone, which is a terrible feeling, especially at a young age. » MGN has been sued on several occasions for engaging in the illegal practice of wiretapping with other celebrities, but not with Prince Harry, except in the case of an article published in 2004 which chronicled one of his evenings in a London nightclub.
It is the first time in more than a century that a member of the British royal family has appeared before a judge: an astonishing event from a constitutional point of view, justice being rendered in the name of the king. Known for his dissolute existence, the Prince of Wales, future King Edward VII, was first called to the bar, in 1871, to explain his relationship with a married woman, and a second time, a few years later, for a game dispute.
A long cross-examination
The lawsuit brought by Prince Harry (and three other plaintiffs) against MGN isn’t quite so shocking, but it is a crucial test for the media group, paving the way for the payment of considerable damages if it is is found guilty. In 2011, the accumulation of phone tapping scandals forced the very powerful News of the World, another legend of Fleet Street (the street of the press), to cease publication.
On Tuesday, Prince Harry’s first day of hearings was devoted to his cross-examination by MGN lawyer Andrew Green, a courteous professional but with no regard for the complainant’s credentials. He spent five long hours trying to highlight his contradictions or the weaknesses of his argument. Dissecting one by one the contentious articles selected by Harry (the High Court retained thirty-three of them), the lawyer wanted to show that the information which they reported at the time of publication had often already been present the previous days in competing newspapers. and that they were therefore probably not obtained by tapping.
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