Prince Harry has his say in court after 7 hours of intensive questioning

Prince Harry ended more than seven hours of intense, at times confrontational testimony in a London courtroom on Wednesday, after challenging the ethics of Britain’s free-roaming tabloid press as he struggled to provide conclusive evidence of lawbreaking by reporters.

For two grueling days, the Prince spoke on the witness stand to accuse Mirror Group Newspapers of intercepting his voicemail messages and using other unlawful means to gather information on everything from his sports injury at school and childhood drug use to the goings-on of a fracture.

While Prince Harry’s cross-examination turned up no concrete evidence of phone hacking, it did underscore the central question facing the investigating judge: whether a pattern of suspiciously detailed coverage of the Prince’s private life is sufficient evidence that tabloids used illegal methods.

The newspaper group has denied the allegations, insisting that the information in the 33 articles quoted by the Prince came from legal means, including other news reports, tips and even official communications from Buckingham Palace.

Prince Harry, 38, is the first prominent member of the British royal family to face cross-examination in a court of law in more than a century. He was repeatedly challenged to substantiate his claims, without being able to provide definitive, rather than circumstantial, evidence.

But sifting through the coverage of deeply personal events, the prince suggested, seemed like a price worth paying in his legal hunt for the tabloids, which Harry has described as a force that casts a shadow over his childhood and continues to haunt his loved ones. .

“All my life the press has misled about me and covered up their misconduct,” Prince Harry said when questioned by his own lawyer, David Sherborne, as he faced the judge. He said the suggestion that he was “speculating” about the tabloids’ actions when the defense “has the evidence in front of them” was baffling.

“I’m not sure what to say about that,” he said.

He previously suggested the decision to take legal action was part of a wider split with the royal family, which he says is too willing to accommodate the media.

When asked why he chose to take the case against The Mirror, Harry, otherwise known as the Duke of Sussex, said his first conversation with lawyers focused on how he was “somehow somehow could find to stop the abuse, intrusion and hatred that was coming.” towards me and my wife to quit’ through a legal way ‘instead of relying on the way of the institution’.

The institution is Buckingham Palace, which has accused the prince of brokering deals with the tabloids – rather than denounce their excesses and defend him and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.

Prince Harry sometimes clashed in court with Andrew Green, the lawyer representing the Mirror Group, especially when he suggested that the prince’s military deployment in Afghanistan was a matter of public interest and worth reporting.

“Are you suggesting that when I was in the military everything was available for the press to write about?” asked the prince.

“May I reiterate that it’s not about you asking me questions, it’s about me asking you questions,” Mr. Green replied.

During his performance, Harry has appealed to the courts – and the wider public outside of court – by highlighting the toll that intrusive coverage has taken on his mental health, friendships and romantic relationships.

On Wednesday, he also spoke about the impact of the trial on Chelsy Davy, a former girlfriend, who was featured in several stories citing the prince and his legal team. “This is a former friend who now has her own family and this process is as distressing to her as it is to me,” he said.

Asked by his own lawyer about his claim that a freelance journalist and private investigator had been responsible for placing a tracking device on Ms Davy’s car in South Africa, the Prince replied: “Because we found it.”

In the afternoon, after Prince Harry completed his cross-examination, the tables were turned when his lawyer Sherborne began questioning another witness, Jane Kerr, who spent 20 years as a journalist at The Daily Mirror in the 1990s and 2000s.

As royal editor, Ms Kerr – who confirmed she had been summoned to court – was the author of several articles that Prince Harry and his legal team have cited in their court case.

Again, the cross-examination was tantalizing as Mr Sherbourne asked probing questions about the paper’s wider news-gathering techniques, focusing on how The Daily Mirror covered the July 2005 London terrorist bombings that killed 52 people and hundreds more were injured.

When Mr Sherbourne asked why requests for information on victims were outsourced by Ms Kerr – up to 900 times – to a company called Commercial & Legal Services, one of a number of entities known to engage in illegal information, she replied repeatedly saying she didn’t remember.

“Don’t you remember, or don’t you want to remember, Mrs. Kerr?” asked Mr. Sherborne.

Asked if she knew how many of the third parties she worked with to obtain data – including freelancers, detectives and news agencies – received that information, Ms Kerr insisted she did not.

“It didn’t occur to me that anything was illegal,” Ms Kerr added as the focus of the trial shifted to the tabloids’ problematic news-gathering practices.

However, it remains to be seen whether these accounts will convince a High Court judge that Mirror Group journalists have unlawfully targeted the royal family in the articles, as Prince Harry claims. The verdict is likely to follow later this month.

And while the prince seemed content to confront sections of the media he despises, his latest contribution to a tense hearing suggested his day in court came at some personal cost.

“You have been on the witness stand for more than a day and a half, having to go through these articles and answer questions in a very public courtroom, knowing that the media is watching,” his lawyer said, adding: “How did that make you feel?”

Prince Harry paused before answering in the silent courtroom, his voice seeming to break a little: “It’s a lot.”