Prince Harry received an order on Friday from the editor of the British tabloid Daily Mirror to pay him 140,600 pounds sterling ($240,000) in damages for articles resulting from the hacking of phone messages.
• Also read: Prince Harry ordered compensation, the tabloid reported
The judge estimated that 15 of the 33 controversial articles withheld in the trial were the result of hacking into the messaging system of King Charles' youngest son or his entourage, as well as other illegal processes.
He estimated that Prince Harry's cell phone messages had been hacked on a “modest scale.”
The judge also highlighted Prince Harry's “propensity” to believe that “anything published was the product of intercepted voicemails”, as this practice was “prevalent within the Mirror Group at the time”. But this practice “was not the only journalistic tool at the time, and allegations regarding the 18 other articles do not stand up to careful analysis.”
The judge also highlighted “the distress” suffered by Harry “as a result of the illegal activities against him and his relatives.”
During the trial, King Charles' youngest son testified in opposition to the royal family for eight hours, spread over two days of proceedings last June.
It was the first appearance of a member of the royal family at the Bar since the future Edward VII's in 1891 for a libel trial.
The 39-year-old prince harbors a stubborn grudge against the tabloid press, which he blames for the death of his mother Diana, who was pursued by paparazzi in Paris in 1997.
He also accuses him of bullying Meghan and being responsible for poor relations with his family.
Harry accused the editor of the Daily Mirror and its Sunday and Celebrity editions of hacking and illegally gathering information, particularly through the use of private investigators.
The group denied the vast majority of allegations, particularly denying hacking of voicemail boxes. However, he had recognized some unlawful events – notably the use of a private investigator in connection with a nightclub outing in 2004 – for five of the 33 articles published between 1996 and 2009 that were taken into account in the proceedings, and apologized.