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Prince Harry accused the Daily Mail of “terrifying” privacy intrusion while the newspaper’s publisher claimed evidence for celebrity phone hacking cases was obtained through “financial inducements and threats” at the start of a bitter trial.
King Charles’s younger son appeared at the High Court on Monday, the opening day of the blockbuster case against Associated Newspapers.
The royal is bringing the case alongside stars including Sir Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley over claims the tabloid deployed unlawful techniques to generate stories about them.
Barrister David Sherborne, representing the celebrity claimants, said that evidence for unlawful activity at Associated was “compelling”.
In a witness statement, excerpts of which were disclosed on Monday, the Duke of Sussex said the Mail had subjected him to “intrusion [that] was terrifying” for his family.
But Associated mounted a ferocious defence, dismissing various allegations as “unfounded” and accusing the claimants of bringing historic claims involving “the purchase of documents and testimony”.
In a scathing attack on the integrity of the claims, lawyers for the publisher said the legal action was a “co-ordinated strategy” by anti-press campaigners. Celebrity litigants had been “recruited and corralled”, they said.
The litigation appeared to have been funded, at least in part, by actor Hugh Grant, former motor-racing boss Max Mosley and Geoffrey Stunt, father of socialite James, lawyers for Associated said.
“Many of the claims are dependent upon alleged confessions supposedly made” by private investigators to a claimant “research team”, they said.
They pointed to alleged financial arrangements with witnesses, including a £25,000 advance payment to private investigator Gavin Burrows for a book deal.
Potential witnesses had even been threatened with exposure of compromising information, lawyers for Associated contended in a written submission.
One former Mail on Sunday journalist said he had been told that an agent acting for the claimants had obtained emails allegedly linking him to phone hacking, which the journalist regarded as an attempt to “blackmail him into co-operating”, they said.
Associated also said Burrows had disavowed an earlier witness statement for the case, suggesting his signature had been forged or his statement doctored.
But Sherborne said the allegations of a conspiracy were “spurious”. He told the court that Associated had been a “cultural hotbed” for unlawful activities that included bugging cars and obtaining private medical records through deception.
“There can be little doubt that journalists and executives across the Mail titles engaged in or were complicit in the culture of unlawful information gathering that wrecked the lives of so many,” he said in a written submission.
Prince Harry, wearing a navy suit, took a seat in the packed courtroom near Hurley, actor Sadie Frost and former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Simon Hughes, all of whom are bringing claims. He was watching the proceedings intently before Mr Justice Matthew Nicklin as Sherborne opened the case.
The alleged activities complained about took place over a period starting in 1993 and extending to 2011 and, in some cases, as recently as 2018.
John and his husband David Furnish allege that Associated unlawfully obtained medical information, including information about the birth of their first son via surrogacy.
Frost claimed that Associated unlawfully obtained extremely sensitive information about her pregnancy and details of her divorce from Jude Law.
Other claimants include Baroness Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen. The Daily Mail campaigned for justice for Stephen but his mother alleges she too was targeted. Sherborne said a “well-known blagger” obtained information about her by pretending to be a journalist from The Guardian newspaper.
Prince Harry said he felt his “every move, thought or feeling was being tracked and monitored just for the Mail to make money out of it”.
The case is the third and final legal battle for Prince Harry in his wide-ranging campaign against the tabloids, which he says have mistreated him and his family throughout his life.
The trial is expected to last up to 10 weeks.
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