Prince Harry has accused the British royal family of withholding information about tapping of telephone conversations by British tabloids in a statement released on Tuesday as part of the court case against the publisher of the Chron.
• Also read: Prince Harry’s surprise appearance at a tabloid hearing
• Also read: Snoop Dogg wants to be at the coronation of King Charles III. to sing
The youngest son of King Charles III. took part in a hearing in the High Court in London on Tuesday for the second day in a row in the lawsuit brought by several celebrities against the Associated Newspaper (ANL) for allegedly illegally gathering information.
In testimony signed Feb. 24, available to AFP, Harry recalls his “difficult relationship with the press” since the death of his mother Diana, but explains that “for a member of the institution, the policy was ‘never complain,’ never explain’.
He says the royal family stopped him from suing the press because “it could open a Pandora’s box”.
“There is no doubt that the (royal) institution has long withheld information about phone hacking from me, and this only became apparent in recent years when I made my own complaint.”
Harry, who only exceptionally travels to Great Britain, made a surprise trip to London to attend the hearing where ANL is trying to defeat the complaints of the king’s son, but also of singer Elton John or actress Liz Hurley.
The six plaintiffs allege that ANL used detectives to bug them.
The group “totally and unequivocally” repudiated these grotesque slurs, which it says aim “to draw the mail’s titles into the phone tapping scandal of 30-year-old articles.”
The British tabloids were rocked about a decade ago by several illegal wiretapping scandals that had been practiced since the early 2000s.
Harry’s visit to the UK comes just over a month before the King’s coronation on May 6th. After leaving the monarchy with a bang in 2020, Harry and his wife Meghan have been exiled to the United States and invited to the ceremony, but have not yet publicly announced if they will accept the invitation.
After a documentary aired on Netflix in December, Harry released his controversial memoir The Substitute in early January, detailing his fractured relationship with his father and brother William.