Prince Harry gives evidence in UK court against Mirror

Group publisher  :
Prince Harry appeared in a British court on Tuesday (June 6) to give deposition in a case filed against the publisher of a big British newspaper group, Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). Through this, he made history as the first member of the royal family to appear in the courtroom after the 19th century.

The Duke of Sussex filed the case against the publisher of the Mirror Group Newspapers alleging the publisher’s journalists hacked his phone and used other illicit means to gather information about his life between 1996 and 2009, report Aljazeera, CNN and other agencies.

Harry, the fifth-in-line to the throne, briefly smiled as he passed the phalanx of waiting photographers and camera crews on Tuesday when he arrived at the modern Rolls Building in central London before the rare court appearance by a royal.
Before testifying, Harry stood in the dock of the London High Court and took the oath with a Bible in hand. Then the lawyer of the accused started cross-examining him.
“I have experienced hostility from the press since I was born,” he said in his witness testimony on Tuesday.

He is one of more than 100 people suing MGN over allegations of widespread wrongdoing between 1991 and 2011.
The prince says more than 33 newspaper articles written about him were based on information which had been unlawfully obtained.
The MGN trial began last month, with lawyers for Harry and the other claimants seeking to prove that unlawful information gathering was carried out with the knowledge and approval of senior editors and executives.
Harry is one of four test cases, and his specific allegations form the focus of the first three days of this week.

However, he did not appear on Monday, having left for the United States, where he now lives with his American wife Meghan, only the previous evening as it was his daughter Lilibet’s birthday on Sunday. The judge, Timothy Fancourt, said he was surprised at his absence.
Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne said on Monday that the prince had been the subject of thousands of MGN stories since he was a young boy, and as such was a regular target of unlawful behaviour, with his late mother Princess Diana, also a victim of hacking.