Prince Harry settles tabloid phone hacking claim, says mission to tame UK media continues
- The British royal accepted ‘substantial’ damages from the Mirror group, which was accused of invading his privacy via illegal snooping
- Harry has blamed the UK press for blighting his life and hounding both his late mother Princess Diana and his wife Meghan Markle
The UK’s Prince Harry said on Friday that his “mission” to rein in the British media continues, after he accepted costs and damages from a tabloid publisher that invaded his privacy with phone hacking and other illegal snooping.
Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, said at a court hearing that Mirror Group Newspapers had agreed to pay all of the prince’s legal costs, plus “substantial” damages, and would make an interim payment of £400,000 (US$505,000) within 14 days. The final tab will be assessed later.
Harry said he had been vindicated, and vowed: “Our mission continues.”
“We have uncovered and proved the shockingly dishonest way in which the Mirror acted for so many years, and then sought to conceal the truth,” the 39-year-old royal said in a statement read outside the High Court in London by his lawyer.
Harry was awarded £140,000 in damages in December, after a judge found that phone hacking was “widespread and habitual” at Mirror Group Newspapers in the late 1990s, went on for more than a decade and that executives at the papers covered it up. Judge Timothy Fancourt found that Harry’s phone was hacked “to a modest extent”.