In a lawsuit before a London court against a British newspaper publisher, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, deliberately broke with the royal family's rule of conduct never to comment on press reports or to take action against them. Harry sues the London High Court together with other public figures, including the singer Elton John and the actresses Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley, against the newspaper publisher Associated Newspapers, which publishes the British tabloid "Daily Mail".
Johannes Leithäuser
Political correspondent for the United Kingdom and Ireland.
- Follow I follow
The plaintiffs accuse the newspaper of having used unlawful methods to obtain information, for example by tapping into telephones and illegally installing listening devices in homes. Among the allegations made by Liz Hurley is that Associated Newspapers approved the theft of confidential medical records from the time of her pregnancy by publishing the information contained therein.
Harry: "uncontrolled power, criminal action"
Prince Harry accused the publisher of the "Daily Mail" in his testimony of "uncontrolled power, influence and criminal action". If such an influential newspaper company can successfully evade legal prosecution, "then the whole country is lost." Harry also told the court that the royal family had prevented him from taking legal action against another newspaper publisher in an earlier case. The wiretapping affair concerned the defunct Sunday tabloid "News of the World", which belonged to the publishing group of the Australian Rupert Murdoch; even then, the illegal tapping of mobile phones, including a young murder victim, but also Princess Diana, Harry's mother, was at the center of the accusations.
The Duke of Sussex now said he had realized that he himself could have taken action against the News Group publishing group. However, the "institution" – Harry used this term as a synonym for royalty – had made it clear "that we do not need to know everything about telephone tapping". It had also been told to him "that the Royal Family did not want to take the witness stand, because that could have opened Pandora's box ("can of worms").
Instead, he was reminded of the established rule of the "institution" in dealing with the press: "never complain, never explain; He had been told to accept this. In the current case, Harry's lawsuit is based, among other things, on publications in the Daily Mail about a brief relationship with a friend during his school days at Eton and a "very emotional" telephone conversation with his brother William, which Harry had at the age of 21 over photographs of her mother.