Prince Harry back in court to give evidence in phone hacking case

Mirror Group Newspaper's lawyer Andrew Green leaves the Rolls Building of the High Court in London, England, on June 7.

Andrew Green has finished his cross-examination of Prince Harry, lasting nearly seven-and-a-half hours over two days.

Prince Harry’s lawyer is beginning to re-examine his client.

Andrew Green questioned the basis of Prince Harry’s claim against MGN as he wrapped up his cross examination of the duke, trying to tear apart allegations of phone hacking – the central tenet of the case.

Green asserted that Harry launched the lawsuit knowing there was no call data to back up allegations that his phone was hacked over a 15-year period.

Green pressed Harry on what he was seeking as an outcome: “I’m trying to understand your claim. Are you claiming damages based on the fact your phone was hacked on a daily basis for that period?” 

He continued: “At the time you filed your claim, you presumably knew there was no call data.” 

Harry alleged that phone hacking occurred “on an industrial scale” at MGN, and that the group engaged in widespread “destruction of evidence.”

“You’ve referred to this before,” Green countered, “where do you get this destruction of evidence from?” 

Prince Harry replied: “My legal team.”

Green also asked the prince when he first decided to seek legal advice about a possible claim against MGN.

The prince said “I bumped into Mr Sherborne in France. It’s in my book,” adding that this was in “2018-ish.”

“Is it right to say that when you first went to solicitors, having bumped into Mr Sherborne in France, you were discussing a claim against News Group, or you were discussing a claim against News Group, and MGN,” Green asked Harry.

Harry said his claim was part of a wider strategy to put an end to “hate” directed against him and wife.

Hidden photographers laid in wait for Harry to arrive to a London location with the former presenter Caroline Flack who he reportedly had a relationship with in 2009, the royal said.

As such the duke testified that they had made a secret plan to meet at a friend’s place in Fulham, London which he expected to be “low key and private,” and so he says he “was so shocked - and livid” to find that two photographers from agency IKON Pictures were already there hiding under a car, “waiting for us to arrive.”

Green however asserts that IKON was the source of this story and not a MGN publication. 

That photographer, Harry acknowledged, “stalked me for a decade.” 

The duke then described the impact this event had on the friend whose apartment they were meeting at that evening.

“Given the fact only the three of us knew the plan, I was highly suspicious and convinced someone had leaked the information to the press.

“I was angry. I hadn’t told anybody. I obviously doubted Caroline, but I even came to distrust Marko. My brother and I stopped talking to him for a while as we just couldn’t understand how stories about us meeting privately with him ended up in the papers, or how photographers would end up outside his apartment.

Andrew Green the lead lawyer for Mirror Group Newspapers arrives at the High Court in London, England, on June 7.

Prince Harry has been more confident since the break, responding in an assertive manner to Green.

Notably, when Green raised the issue of public interest again in relation to an article about the prince’s time in the army, Prince Harry looked directly at Green and asked in a stern tone “are you suggesting that while I was in the army, everything was available to write about?”

Harry objected to an article published by the Daily Mirror on September 28 2008, detailing Harry’s potential return to serve with the British military in Afghanistan.

Green claimed that “there had been quite considerable public debate” about whether a member of the royal family should serve on the front line in Afghanistan.

The prince agreed that the story was a source of legitimate public interest.

“I had been withdrawn from Afghanistan in March 2008 because of the security threat my regiment faced. There was supposed to be a press embargo, and in an attempt to keep this in place, it had been agreed that subject to certain details being kept strictly confidential, some members of the British media would join me for a period to take exclusive photographs and footage,” Harry claimed in his witness statement. 

“Even in a warzone, I couldn’t escape the media. Unfortunately, an Australian journalist revealed my location and an American website broke the press embargo. A target had been placed on my head and I was withdrawn,” he said.

The Mirror article Harry objected to, headlined “Soldier Harry’s Taliban,” concerned the prince’s potential redeployment some months later, once it was safer for him to do so.

Green argued that this article did not concern Harry’s private life, since the question of his redeployment “was a military decision.”

The prince claimed that the article did concern his private life, since the article contained “a huge quote from a royal source.”

Green contested that “there would have been any number of people around you who knew your feelings about wanting to go back.”

Harry disagreed, saying that he did not widely share his feelings about wanting to return to serve with the military. Instead, when he was “down and frustrated,” he would confide in Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, his private secretary.

The prince claimed that he suspects that Lowther-Pinkerton’s phone was hacked by MGN journalists.

When asked why Lowther-Pinkerton had not been made available to give evidence, the prince claimed that he “would prefer to have a quiet family life” after settling his own phone hacking case against News Group Newspaper in a separate trial.

Proceedings have resumed after a short break

Harry claims that an exclusive photograph in the Sunday Mirror of the duke dropping off ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy on the grounds of his former residence Kensington Palace was “suspicious” because of the location on a private road which was not normally frequented by photographers. 

The picture which was presented as “proof” as part of a report claiming the couple had reunited, claimed to prove that Davy had spent the night at the palace.

Harry linked the photo to invoices obtained by his legal team for private investigators for a file named “Chelsy watch.”

“Given how little there really is to the story, it is mind boggling the amount of enquiries and payments MGN had made,” Harry alleges in his statement as part of a broader argument of the scale of press operation to gain information about him illegally.

The incident, Harry told the court, was a “security issue” given the road’s location.

Harry said as “she had spent the night with me, I was dropping her off as close as I could to Kensington High Street, and to know there was a photographer there waiting.”

Green pressed Harry on his objections to a Sunday Mirror article published in November 2007, detailing the breakdown of his relationship with Chelsy Davy.

“Along with the photograph, the article reports my arrival time, how I entered the club and who else was with me,” the prince wrote in his witness statement.

Green asked Harry whether he was aware that various other papers had reported on his nights out in this particular London nightclub.

The judge also asked Harry whether he often went to this nightclub.

The prince also claimed that he found the headline – “Hooray Harry dumped” – to be “hurtful.”

He said he had been upset “that such a painful moment was turned into a laugh.”

Green asked the prince if he was suggesting that the headline was celebrating that he had been dumped.

“If you look at the article, it said that she [Davy] had got tired of your ‘hooray’ lifestyle,” Green said.

Britain's Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy laugh before the game between South Africa and England at the Investec Challenge international rugby match at Twickenham, London on November 22, 2008.

Prince Harry believes that a “royal exclusive” in the tabloid the People, detailing a “highly private” argument between the duke and his father King Charles over his relationship with then girlfriend Chelsy Davy, is the “kind of article just perpetuated feelings of distrust, within all of my relationships.” 

Due to the private nature of the call with Charles in which the duke was reported to have “slammed the phone down” and the fact that the duke says he never discussed his relationship,” Harry asserts that the “source” named in the article was “suspicious.”

In his witness statement Harry alleges that the article included a quote from a senior aide that described him being “incandescent” when Charles described his and Davy’s relationship as “puppy love” that he had “exploded,” and was banned from seeing Davy in Cape Town by his father.

Harry insisted to the court that “ he never spoke to anyone in the palace about the relationship between me and my girlfriend.”

“This shows me that MGN were digging around my associates to unlawfully gather my private information. There really was no respite from the press intrusion,” Harry’s witness statement reads.

Court artist sketch of the Duke of Sussex (right) being cross examined by Andrew Green KC, as he gives evidence at the Rolls Buildings in central London during the phone hacking trial against Mirror Group Newspapers on June 7.

Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, made a rare intervention during Green’s cross-examination of the prince.

Green was questioning Harry about a 2006 article published in the People, detailing an argument the prince had in a nightclub with then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy.

Harry claimed that the “detail about the timing and length of the calls is so specific,” that it made him suspicious. 

He told the court that, because his “girlfriend’s number was bizarrely in the hands of Mirror journalists,” he believed the journalist who wrote the piece likely “got hold of her call data” and used it to make a story.

The prince agreed. When asked to provide evidence, Harry claimed that he thought “most of the evidence has been destroyed.”

In his written evidence, the prince cited three payments made to various contributors to the story, which he claimed to find “particularly suspicious.”

Green suggested that a more likely version of events is that “a payment has been made to a freelance journalist” who may have attended the nightclub, rather than hacking the prince’s or Davy’s phone.

“One of those payments, I accept, is probably to a person who works at the club,” Harry said.

Sherborne intervened, claiming that Green’s line of questioning was “inappropriate.”

The prince’s lawyer claimed that when Green suggests that “what has happened is X, it’s putting a case that there is no basis for.”

MGN lawyer Andrew Green pressed Prince Harry on the specifics of his phone hacking allegations, saying there is “not a single item of call data at any time” between Harry’s phone and any Mirror Group journalist. 

“That would be speculating – I am not sure if I would be relieved or disappointed, ”Harry responded.

The duke told the court he believes undoubtedly that phone hacking was at an “industrial scale” across “at least three papers,” so he added that it would be an “injustice” if his claim was not successful. 

“So you want to have been phone hacked?” Green asked.

Prince Harry began his time in the witness box on Wednesday with a more deflective approach, in comparison to a mostly measured manner on Tuesday.

Sitting under the bright lights of the modern and simple court room, the prince, although still softly spoken, had a firmer tone when responding to questions. Within the first 30 minutes, he told Green on several occasions to ask his legal team rather than answer directly to the line of questioning. 

Green’s maintained his clinical and repetitive line of questioning for each archive news article

One of Green’s tactics is to question when the prince first read each of the 33 articles being interrogated.

On several occasions on Tuesday, Prince Harry said he could not recall every article he had read, rather arguing that the distress caused was from all articles.

Prince Harry again continued that argument on Wednesday, adding that reading those articles were “more distressing than going through this process.”

Green’s cross-examination of Prince Harry is expected to last several more hours, with the prince’s lawyer allocated a day and a half for his line of questioning. The back and forth between the pair is picking up pace as the day progresses.

Officer Cadets parade into the Old College building following the 200th Sovereign's Parade at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS) in Camberley, England, on April 14

In his witness statement, Harry objected to an article published in May 2005 in the People newspaper, which reported that the prince had delayed his entry to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst due to a knee injury.

The newspaper suggested the prince was receiving favorable treatment.

The prince alleged that Dean Rousewell, the journalist who wrote the piece, “is well-known in this litigation as having used unlawful information gathering techniques himself, and also a habitual commissioner of private investigators.”

Andrew Green, however, pointed the prince to statements he had made months prior to the article being published, detailing his knee injury and the potential effect it would have on his entry to Sandhurst.

In one such statement cited by Green, Harry had claimed he wanted to ensure he was “100%” before starting at the military academy. The statement “gave detailed information about the condition of your knee… including an MRI scan,” Green said.

The prince agreed.

Harry was also asked what he thought would constitute a “public interest story” about him.

Harry suggested “a life-threatening injury” might be a legitimate cause of public interest.

The Duke of Sussex has entered court 15 of London’s High Court and proceedings are set to get underway.

Barrister Andrew Green, representing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), will resume his cross-examination of the prince.

Journalists are filing into Court 15 at the Rolls Building of London’s High Court for day two of Prince Harry’s witness testimony.

Due to the high interest in the case, an additional overflow room as been set up for press members unable to get a seat in the courtroom where the prince is giving evidence.

Press are also lining the streets in front of the court, with television crews from around the world set up to get a glimpse of Prince Harry.

Members of the public also have the chance to get a seat in the courtroom, with people lining up since the early hours of the morning.

Many of those here are the same people who attended yesterday, a mix of budding lawyers, Prince Harry fans, and law enthusiasts.

Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex walks outside the Rolls Building of the High Court in London, England, on June 7.

The Duke of Sussex has arrived at London’s High Court to continue to give evidence in his claim against Mirror Group Newspapers.

Harry arrived outside the Rolls Building in central London just before 10.00 am in a black Range Rover.

He did not respond to reporters’ questions as he entered the building.

Harry became the first senior member of the British royal family to take to the witness box in more than a century on Tuesday, enduring a grueling day of cross-examination.

The prince submitted 33 articles where he alleged that media outlets owned by Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) had engaged in unlawful information gathering or fact checking.

After the first few exchanges, the rhythm of the cross-examination began to progress along predictable lines. Here are some of the main themes:

Uncertain timelines: Andrew Green, the barrister representing MGN, began by asking the prince when he had seen each article that he alleged had caused him “distress.” This became Green’s first line of defense. “If you don’t have any recollection of reading the article at the time, how do you say that this article caused you distress?” he asked the Duke of Sussex. Harry repeatedly claimed that he could not remember the first instance he had come across each article, as many of them were written more than 20 years ago. Instead, Harry argued that the press coverage fed into a “general environment” that played a “destructive role” during his childhood and adolescence.

Not just The Mirror: Green tried to demonstrate that MGN newspapers were among many other papers covering the prince’s life – and in many cases simply retold stories that were already “in the public domain.” The barrister often pointed to articles published by The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, and other outlets, to suggest that the Daily Mirror had not engaged in nefarious practices of its own in many instances. Harry conceded that he could see “similarities” between some of these stories. When asked why he had not launched complaints about the outlets that first put the stories into the public domain, Harry said he had not been made aware of each of them.

“Ask the journalist”: Green pressed Harry on several occasions to specify whose phone he believes was hacked to obtain private information. But most exchanges ended with Harry claiming that Green would have to “ask the journalists” if they had engaged in phone hacking. “I don’t believe as a witness it’s my job to construct the article or instruct which parts were unlawfully obtained or weren’t, the journalist should be doing that,” Harry told the court. In a heated moment, Green asked: “Are we, Prince Harry, in the realms of total speculation?” Harry responded: “I don’t believe so.”

Lawyer David Sherborne, a member of Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex's legal team, walks outside the Rolls Building at the High Court in London, England, on June 5.

His directory of clients reads like a royal wedding guest list. In matters of defamation and privacy, it doesn’t get much more A-list than David Sherborne – acting as The Duke of Sussex’s lawyer in today’s civil case.

In the past, Sherborne has represented Tony and Cherie Blair, Donald and Melania Trump, Johnny Depp, Chelsea Clinton, Paul McCartney, Benazhir Bhutto, Harry Styles, Mike Tyson – and even Harry’s late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.

“David is a leading barrister in the field of media and communication, specializing in privacy, confidentiality and defamation, as well as matrimonial and sports law,” his profile on the 5RB chambers website reads. He has become the first port of call for celebrities seeking damages for undue intrusions by the press into their private lives.

Sherborne was Lead Counsel for the victims of press intrusion at the Leveson Inquiry – a judicial public inquiry into ethics and practices of the British press launched in 2011, in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal.

What was the Leveson inquiry?: In the years leading up to 2011, several celebrities, royals and politicians had claimed to have had their phones hacked by the News of the World – a British tabloid. The paper’s royal editor and a private investigator had even been convicted of intercepting phone messages and spent time in prison. 

The scandal reached its peak when the Guardian reported that police suspected the cellphone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler had been hacked by News of the World and that messages had been deleted to free up space for new voicemail. The allegations sparked huge public outrage and resulted in the paper’s boss Rupert Murdoch closing down the 168-year-old tabloid newspaper.

In 2011, at the conclusion of the inquiry, Lord Justice Leveson delivered his damning report on the “culture, practices and ethics” of the British press. Leveson claimed that sections of the press “had wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people whose rights and liberties have been disdained.”

The Duke of Sussex and three other claimants representing dozens of celebrities are suing MGN, accusing its titles of obtaining private information by phone hacking and through other illicit means, including by using private investigators, between 1991 and 2011.

The trial started on May 10, and is expected to last seven weeks.

MGN is contesting most of the allegations, arguing in its court filings that some claims have been brought too late and that in all four cases there is insufficient evidence of phone hacking.

Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne has said his claim against MGN, which covers incidences from 1995 to 2011, is “significant not just in terms of time span but in the range of activity it covers.”

Harry was subject to the most “intrusive methods of obtaining personal information,” Sherborne said, arguing that “no one should be subjected to that.” The “unlawful methods” were “habitual and widespread” among the journalists, Sherborne added.

Hello and welcome to our coverage as Prince Harry faces a second day in the witness box at London’s High Court as part of his hacking case against a major British newspaper group.

Join us for live updates.