LONDON, June 5 (AP): Prince Harry’s phone hacking trial against the publisher of the Daily Mirror kicked off on Monday without him present — and the judge was not happy.
Harry’s lawyer said the Duke of Sussex would not be available to testify after opening statements because he caught a flight back from Los Angeles on Sunday after the birthday of his 2-year-old daughter, Lilibet.
“I’m a little surprised,” Justice Timothy Fancourt said, noting he had directed Harry to be in court for the first day of his case.
Related Posts:
Mirror Group Newspaper’s lawyer, Andrew Green, said he was “deeply troubled” by Harry’s absence on opening day.
Harry originally was scheduled to testify on Tuesday. His lawyer was told last week the duke should attend the trial on Monday in case the opening statements concluded before the end of the day.
The case is the first of the Duke of Sussex’s several lawsuits against the media to go to trial, and one of three alleging tabloid publishers unlawfully snooped on him.
Harry will be the first member of the British royal family in more than a century to testify in court. He is expected to describe his anguish and anger over being hounded by the media throughout his life, and its impact on those around him.
Harry, 38, has blamed paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother, Princess Diana, and said harassment and intrusion by the UK press, including allegedly racist articles, led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the US in 2020 and leave royal life behind.
Articles he has cited date back to his 12th birthday, in 1996, when the Mirror reported Harry was feeling “badly” about the divorce of his mother and father, now King Charles III.
Harry said in court documents that the reports made him wonder who he could trust as he feared friends and associates were betraying him by leaking information to the newspapers. His circle of friends grew smaller and he suffered “huge bouts of depression and paranoia”.
Relationships fell apart as the women in his life – and even their family members – were “dragged into the chaos”.
He says he later discovered that the source wasn’t disloyal friends but aggressive journalists and the private investigators they hired to eavesdrop on voicemails and track him to locations as remote as Argentina and an island off Mozambique.
Mirror Group Newspapers said it didn’t hack Harry’s phone and its articles were based on legitimate reporting techniques. The publisher admitted and apologised for hiring a private eye to dig up dirt on one of Harry’s nights out at a bar, but the resulting 2004 article headlined “Sex on the beach with Harry” is not among the 33 in question at trial.
Phone hacking that involved guessing or obtaining security codes to listen in on celebrities’ cell phone voice messages was widespread at British tabloids in the early years of this century.
It became an existential crisis for the industry after the revelation in 2011 that the News of the World had hacked the phone of a slain 13-year-old girl.
Owner Rupert Murdoch shut down the paper and several of his executives faced criminal trials.
Mirror Group has paid more than 100 million pounds (USD 125 million) to settle hundreds of unlawful information-gathering claims, and printed an apology to phone hacking victims in 2015. But it denies executives – including Piers Morgan, who was editor of the Daily Mirror editor between 1995 and 2004 — knew about hacking.
