Zürcher Nachrichten - Prince Harry says tabloid coverage felt like 'full blown stalking'

On the third day of the highly anticipated nine-week trial, Harry began testifying against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), the publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail, which he and six others accuse of unlawful information gathering against them.

The newspaper group strenuously denies his claims.

Harry insisted in a witness statement to the court that the trial was not "not just about me" but was also in the wider public interest.

The suspicion that people close to him were leaking stories to the press created an atmosphere of "distrust", he said, that led to the breakdown of his relationship with another girlfriend, Natalie Pinkham.

"It led to me not speaking to her for years," he stated. "...but I now believe that it (the articles) will have come from listening in to our communications, voicemail interception and/or blagging (impersonation)."

Referring to his romance with Davy, Harry said in his statement the coverage by two journalists in particular was oppressive.

"They turned up everywhere. It felt like full blown stalking and constant surveillance... This sort of intrusion was terrifying for Chelsy," he said.

- 'Hunted' feeling -

"It made her feel like she was being hunted and the press had caught her and it was terrifying for me too because there was nothing I could do to stop it," he added.

The case has been brought by Harry alongside six other high-profile figures, including pop icon Elton John and his husband David Furnish.

It is the prince's last active legal case in his long-running crusade against the British media.

"There is obviously a personal element to bringing this claim, motivated by truth, justice and accountability, but it is not just about me," he said in the statement unveiled as he entered the witness box.

"There is also a social element concerning all the thousands of people whose lives were invaded because of greed," the prince said.

Dressed in a dark suit and striped tie, Harry, 41, took the stand at London's High Court late morning, swearing an oath on the bible before facing questions from ANL's legal team.

He made history in 2023 by becoming the first senior British royal to enter the witness box in more than a century, when he testified in his successful hacking claim against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).

Last year, on the eve of another scheduled trial, Rupert Murdoch's UK tabloid publisher NGN agreed to pay him "substantial damages" for privacy breaches, including phone hacking.

- 'Lurid' -

In the ANL case, the seven well-known figures -- including actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost -- accuse the publisher of illegally intercepting voicemail messages, listening in on phone calls and deceptively obtaining private information.

They allege it paid private investigators implicated in other phone-hacking lawsuits for some of the unlawful information used to generate dozens of stories.

The accusations cover a period from at least 1993 to 2018 in some instances.

ANL has consistently denied the claims, calling them "lurid" and "preposterous".

King Charles III's younger son has long railed against media intrusion, blaming paparazzi for the death of his mother Princess Diana, who was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997 while trying to shake them off.

Campaigner Doreen Lawrence -- whose son Stephen was murdered in a 1993 racist attack -- and ex-politician Simon Hughes are the other two claimants.

David Sherborne, representing the seven, told the High Court on Monday that he planned to show "there was clear and systematic use of unlawful gathering of information" at ANL.

The allegations around payments to private investigators were "clutching at straws in the wind", White said on Tuesday.

U.Ammann--NZN