Prince Harry appeared on Monday morning at the High Court in London, where hearings are held in the case of the company that publishes the Daily Mail tabloid, Associated Newspaper (ANL), accused by several celebrities of receiving a series of personal information. in an illegal way, reported AFP and Reuters, quoted by Agerpres.

In pictures published by Sky News, the 38-year-old British prince got out of a minibus and walked into the building where the company that publishes the Daily Mail will try to stop legal investigations that have begun during the hearing, which will last four days. the young son of King Charles III, singer Elton John and actress Liz Hurley.

The plaintiffs include the singer’s husband Elton John, film producer David Furnish and actress Sadie Frost. But one of the most prominent accusers is perhaps Doreen Lawrence, the mother of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, who was killed in a 1993 racist attack.

She later received the title of baroness for her humanitarian campaigns. The Daily Mail tabloid campaigned for her son’s killers to be brought to justice and said the allegations against her were “appalling and completely unfounded”.

The surprise appearance in London of Prince Harry, who travels the United Kingdom only on exceptional occasions, comes shortly before the coronation ceremony of the new British sovereign, scheduled for May 6.

Harry and his wife Meghan, who have settled in the United States since leaving the royal family in a scandal in 2020, have been invited to the ceremony but have not yet publicly announced whether they will honor the invitation.

Prince Harry’s series of accusations against his family

The return of the Dukes of Sussex to the United Kingdom for the coronation ceremony has been the subject of much speculation in the British media in recent months, following fierce criticism of the royal couple by the royal couple.

Following the documentary that Netflix aired in December, Prince Harry published a controversial memoir titled Spare in early January, in which he talks about his teenage years marked by drug and alcohol abuse and details the breakdown of his relationship with his father, Charles. and his older brother Prince William.

Initially, the British king was not supposed to be in the country on Monday and Tuesday, as he had a planned state visit to France, which was postponed due to the difficult social climate and violent protests organized in that country over the pension reform. , promoted by President Emmanuel Macron.

In the trial, which began in London, six people accused ANL, which publishes the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and Mail Online, of using private detectives to tap their mobile phones, installing microphones in their homes and cars and bribing police officers. to receive confidential information.

When the proceedings were announced in early October 2022, the media group rejected “thoroughly and unequivocally these grotesque defamations, which appear to be nothing more than a planned and organized attempt to drag the Daily Mail’s headlines into a 30-year-old wiretapping scandal”.

A wave of lawsuits against British tabloids

A decade ago, Britain’s tabloid press was rocked by a series of wiretapping scandals in the early 2000s. Prince Harry had already sued the Mail on Sunday for defamation over an article about its security measures, and won damages from the same Sunday paper last year by another accusations of defamation.

His wife Megan also won a claim against the ANL in 2021 for breach of privacy rights after printing a letter addressed to her father.

Prince Harry is expected to appear in court in May to give evidence in a defamation suit against another tabloid, the Daily Mirror, following allegations of illegal wiretapping.

Media interference was one of the reasons Harry and Meghan gave when they gave up their official duties in the British royal family and moved to California to build a new life and career.