Next Week, Prince Harry will be the first British Royal to testify in court after 130 years. The Duke of Sussex will testify in his case against a newspaper group. He accuses the Mirror Group of illegal conduct.
Harry will stand in the witness box at the High Court of London after he and other high-profile figures accuse Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People.
It will be the first time in 130 years when a royal family member will stand in the witness box and testify in the court after Edward VII when he stood in the witness box and testified in 1870 and 1890 in a slander trial over a card game.
Harry has hardly been out of the spotlight in the last six months after he release his memoir and Netflix documentary series in which he blamed other senior British royals for conspiring with tabloid newspapers. He is likely to get attention from the Worldwide when he appears in court.
David Yelland, a former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Sun tabloid newspaper said the royal family had long aimed to sidestep court cases because they were not in control of the situation. These cases are often a case of mutually assured destruction. I don’t think anyone will get out looking great, he said.
Along with Harry, more than 100 celebrities are suing Mirror Group.
The trial has been told MGN journalists or private investigators commissioned by them carried out phone hacking on an “industrial scale”, and executed other illegal acts to get details about the prince and the other accusers.