Prince Harry faces challenge to phone hacking accusations in second day of testimony

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After nearly two days of testifying, Prince Harry left a London courtroom on Wednesday with a flurry of accusations about 15 years of systemic phone hacking by tabloid journalists, but no direct proof of any wrongdoing.

On Wednesday, the Duke of Sussex told a High Court judge that his cellphone may have been hacked routinely from 1996 to 2011. “It could have been happening on a daily basis, I simply don’t know,” he said.

When asked by Andrew Green, a lawyer for tabloid publisher Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) whether he was aware of any evidence his phone had been hacked at all during that time frame, Harry replied, “No, that’s the part of the reason why I am here.”

The Prince is suing MGN and two other newspaper chains over allegations that reporters and editors tapped into phones and used other deceptive practices to obtain personal information for hundreds of news stories.

He told the court on Wednesday that he made the decision to launch the legal actions in 2018, shortly after his marriage to Meghan Markle, whom he alleged was constantly harassed by the media.

He testified that he spoke to London lawyer David Sherborne about how to handle “the abuse, intrusion and hate that was coming towards me and my wife, and seeing if there was any other way to find a different course of action rather than relying on the lawyer” of the Royal Family.

That led to the lawsuits and what Harry has referred to as his “life’s mission” to reform Britain’s media.

But when challenged on specifics by Mr. Green, Harry had difficulty at times going beyond his general condemnation of the press.

The MGN case has been narrowed down to 33 articles published between 1996 and 2011 in the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.

While MGN and other newspaper companies have acknowledged over the years that hacking took place in hundreds of cases, Mr. Green has denied that MGN reporters ever broke into the Prince’s phone. He said each of the articles at issue in the trial was based on publicly available information or sources cultivated by journalists. And he pushed Harry to produce phone records or any other evidence to prove otherwise.

On several occasions the Prince responded by suggesting that there was a lack of evidence because reporters at MGN and other papers had engaged in the destruction of evidence “on an industrial scale” to cover their tracks.

That eventually drew the ire of Mr. Green.

“You constantly refer to destruction of evidence. Where do you get this idea of destruction of evidence by the Mirror Group?” Mr. Green asked at one point.

“From my legal team,” Harry replied.

Mr. Green also challenged comments the Prince made in his witness statement about “a real blurring of the lines in terms of what is in the public interest and what is of interest to the public.” The comments were in reference to what the Prince said was a steady stream of salacious stories that focused on his girlfriends, his troubles at school and his visits to nightclubs.

“What would be a public interest story about you which would be legitimate to publish?” Mr. Green asked.

When the Harry declined to answer, Mr. Green pressed him for an example. “A life-threatening injury,” the Prince said. “I’m sure there are others.”

Harry did hit back at Mr. Green’s suggestion that much of his testimony was “in the realm of speculation.”

“For my whole life, the press misled me, and have covered up their wrongdoing,” he told the judge. “So to be sitting here in court knowing that the defence has the evidence in front of them, and Mr. Green suggests that I’m speculating – I’m not entirely sure what to say about that.”

He also said he would find it difficult to accept if the presiding judge, Timothy Fancourt, found that no hacking had taken place in the case. “I believe phone hacking was at an industrial scale across at least three of the papers at the time and that is beyond doubt. And to have a decision against me, I would feel some injustice if it wasn’t accepted.”

As the Prince’s testimony drew to a close, Mr. Sherborne asked Harry how he felt about being cross-examined for a day and a half as the world’s media watched. After a long pause, Harry bowed his head and said: “It’s a lot.”