{"id":111831,"date":"2026-01-20T00:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T00:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=111831"},"modified":"2026-01-20T00:03:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T00:03:00","slug":"harry-says-he-was-made-paranoid-by-daily-mail-publishers-unlawful-actions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=111831","title":{"rendered":"Harry says he was made \u2018paranoid\u2019 by Daily Mail publisher\u2019s \u2018unlawful\u2019 actions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>5 Minute, 34 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><div>\n<p>The Duke of Sussex was made to feel \u201cparanoid beyond belief\u201d by alleged unlawful information gathering by the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, a court has heard.<\/p>\n<p>Prince Harry is among seven high-profile claimants, including Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, alleging the papers\u2019 publisher, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), committed \u201cgrave breaches of privacy\u201d over a 20-year period.<\/p>\n<p>The prince felt his \u201cevery move, thought or feeling was being tracked and monitored just for the Mail to make money out of it\u201d, according to a written submission by his lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>ANL said the duke\u2019s social circle was \u201cknown to be a good source of leaks\u201d to the press and has repeatedly denied the claimants\u2019 allegations.<\/p>\n<p>Antony White KC, representing the publisher, said it was \u201ca striking feature of the case that none of the articles were the subject of complaint by the claimants at the time of publication\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe pattern of misconduct the claimants seek to establish is simply not made out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joining the duke in bringing the lawsuit against ANL are:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost<\/li>\n<li>Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish<\/li>\n<li>Sir Simon Hughes, the former Liberal Democrat MP<\/li>\n<li>Baroness Doreen Lawrence, a campaigner whose son Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in south London in 1993<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Prince Harry was present in the courtroom on Monday for the first day of the trial, which is expected to last nine weeks.<\/p>\n<p>David Sherborne, representing the claimants, quoted the prince in his written submission as saying the papers\u2019 alleged activity created \u201cdistrust and suspicion\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He said the \u201cintrusion\u201d was \u201cterrifying\u201d for his loved ones while \u201cisolating me\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Sherborne said the alleged unlawful information gathering in the duke\u2019s case was related to 14 articles between 2001 and 2013.<\/p>\n<p>The Daily Mail\u2019s current royal editor, Rebecca English, was accused of \u201cobtaining the exact plane seats, flight times and travel plans\u201d of Prince Harry\u2019s then-girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, in December 2007.<\/p>\n<p>Sherborne alleged the information was obtained through private investigator Mike Behr, who was accused of suggesting he could \u201cplant someone next to her\u201d on the flight to South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>For the publisher, White said English \u201cstrongly denies that she ever used Mr Behr for unlawful information-gathering\u201d, and the allegation was \u201cunsupported by the evidence before the court\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He said the prince\u2019s social circle \u201cat all material times\u2026 was and was known to be a good source of leaks or disclosure of information to the media about what he got up to in his private life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said all the articles \u201cwere sourced entirely legitimately from information variously provided by contacts of the journalists responsible\u201d, including press officers and publicists, freelance journalists, photographers and prior reports.<\/p>\n<p>White also said the duke discussed his private life in the media and that information about his life was provided by Palace spokespeople.<\/p>\n<p>Sherborne said there had been \u201csystematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering\u201d at the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday and that there was \u201cno way\u201d that details reported in some articles could have been lawfully obtained.<\/p>\n<p>In their joint opening statement, the claimants accused a string of senior Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists of commissioning and using unlawfully gathered information from private investigators.<\/p>\n<p>They said they were \u201cengaged in or complicit in the culture of unlawful information gathering that wrecked the lives of so many\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Sir Elton and Furnish accused ANL of \u201cstealing\u201d their son Zachary\u2019s birth certificate before they \u201chad a chance to see it ourselves,\u201d accusing the publisher of \u201cinvasion of medical details\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>White said in written submissions that their claims were \u201cunsupported by any evidence before the court and utterly baseless\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Mail on Sunday journalist Katie Nicholl was accused of having obtained intimate information about Frost\u2019s private life, including the termination of her pregnancy, about which the actor had not even told her mother.<\/p>\n<p>Notebooks showed \u201cSusie\u201d of ELI, a private investigation firm, provided information on the point, Sherborne said, adding that days later there were payments recorded as \u201cKATIE NICHOLLS URGENT ENQ\u201d and \u201cK NICHOLLS SEARCHES\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Baroness Lawrence said she felt she had been targeted as she sought the truth about her son\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n<p>She said she felt she \u201ccould not even grieve the injustice of what was happening privately, even for a day\u201d and that she had been made \u201ca victim all over again\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Her allegations concern five articles published between 1997 and 2007, written by veteran Daily Mail crime correspondent Stephen Wright.<\/p>\n<p>The claims include that he made payments of thousands in cash for \u201cspecial contacts re Stephen Lawrence\u201d and \u201cspecial inquiries\u201d, and that he got \u201cwell-known blagger\u201d Christine Hart to call Baroness Lawrence pretending to be a journalist from the Guardian, as it was believed she would be more likely to speak to her.<\/p>\n<p>Baroness Lawrence said she was \u201cangry that the Mail seems more interested in interrogating me about how I found out what they did to me\u2026 then threatening to question me at trial about all this, rather than saying sorry, investigating what they did, and getting at the truth of what happened\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>White said the allegations against the reporter were \u201cdenied in their entirety\u201d and were \u201cunsupported by the available evidence\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Sherborne, meanwhile, said ANL had kept up a \u201chear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil defence\u201d, claiming that during the 2012 Leveson public inquiry \u2013 into the culture, practice and ethics of the press \u2013 the publisher argued there had been no unlawful activity at all.<\/p>\n<p>He said ANL \u201cknew they had skeletons in their closet\u201d because the company investigated the use of phone hacking between 2003 and 2005, finding evidence in stories that the technique had been used.<\/p>\n<p>ANL has repeatedly denied the allegations, calling them \u201clurid\u201d and \u201cpreposterous\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>White said: \u201cIn relation to almost every article alleged to be the product of phone hacking or phone tapping, Associated is able to call a witness or witnesses to explain how the article was, in fact, sourced.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer added that \u201cthe pattern of misconduct the claimants seek to establish is simply not made out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is a civil trial, so there is no jury. The judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, will decide the case on his own.<\/p>\n<p>It is Prince Harry\u2019s third major court battle, accusing newspaper groups of unlawful behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>In December 2023, he won 15 claims in his case, accusing Mirror Group Newspapers of unlawfully gathering information for stories published about him.<\/p>\n<p>In January 2025, the publisher of the Sun newspaper agreed to pay \u201csubstantial damages\u201d and issued an apology to the prince over claims of unlawful intrusion into his life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"111831\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/wp-content\/plugins\/booster-extension\/\/assets\/icon\/happy.svg\" 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src=\"https:\/\/www.myjoyonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-1379-150x150.png\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Harry says he was made 'paranoid' by Daily Mail publisher's 'unlawful' actions\" title=\"Harry says he was made 'paranoid' by Daily Mail publisher's 'unlawful' actions\">The Duke of Sussex was made to feel &#8220;paranoid beyond belief&#8221; by alleged unlawful information gathering by the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, a court has heard.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10357,1910,10,9,8297],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-mail","category-international","category-politics","category-popular","category-prince-harry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}