Prince Harry’s battle with British tabloids heads for courtroom showdown

Prince Harry’s battle with the British press is headed for a showdown in a London courtroom this week with the publisher of the Daily Mirror.

The Duke of Sussex is scheduled to testify in the High Court after his lawyer presents opening statements Monday in the first of his legal cases to go to trial and one of three alleging tabloids unlawfully snooped on him in their cutthroat competition for scoops on the royal family.

Harry will be the first member of the British royal family in more than a century to testify in court and 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, the late Princess Diana, and said harassment and intrusion by the U.K. press, including allegedly racist articles, ultimately led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the US in 2020 and leave royal life behind.

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Articles he has cited date back to this 12th birthday when the Mirror reported he was feeling "badly” about the divorce of his mother and father, now King Charles III.

The reports made Harry wonder who he could trust as he feared friends and associates were betraying him by leaking information to the newspapers, he said in court documents. 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 his 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 apologized for hiring a private eye to dig up dirt on one of Harry's nights out at bar, but the resulting 2004 article headlined "Sex on the beach with Harry" was not among the 33 in question at trial.

Associated Press