The battle of prince henry of England against the British tabloids began this Thursday what will foreseeably be its last chapter. The legal team of the youngest son of Carlos III has discussed the previous issues of the trial against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publishing group of the ‘Daily Mail’a few days before the start of the procedure, scheduled for next Monday at the High Court of England and Wales. Enrique and six other plaintiffs, including the musician Elton Johnconsider that ANL collected information about its private lives through illegal practicesincluding wiretapping.
The prosecution alleges that ANL hired private investigators to tap the landlines and mobile phones of the victims and to obtain confidential informationsuch as flight data and medical records, with fraudulent methods. This information was collected on behalf of nearly 80 journalists, editors and company executives and published in several articles between 1993 and 2011. In addition to Enrique and Elton John, the musician’s partner was also affected, David Furnish; member of the House of Lords Doreen Lawrence; the actresses Elizabeth Hurley y Sadie Frost; and the former deputy Simon Hughes.
All of them are expected to appear in court in the coming weeks. In Enrique’s case, his intervention is scheduled for next thursday in person, in what will be a new moment of enormous media expectation in the UK. Harry left his responsibilities as a working member of the British royal family in 2020 and moved shortly after to USAwhere he currently lives with his wife, Meghan Markle, and their two children. Since then, he has limited his trips to the country to specific times.
Media trial
The legal representatives of ANL They maintain that at no time were illegal methods used to obtain information about the plaintiffs and attribute the legal actions to a campaign to end the ‘Daily Mail’ orchestrated by his detractors—among them the actor Hugh Grant or the former businessman from the motor world Max Mosleydied in 2021—, some of whom have provided support to the legal team of those allegedly affected.
One of the key moments of the trial will be the possible appearance of Gavin Burrowsone of the private detectives hired by ANL, who acknowledged in a written statement that he had used illegal methods and later denied having been the one who made that same statement. “I do not recognize the previous witness statement of August 16, 2021 and I believe that my signature on that document is false. Much of it is not written in my type of language,” he said last November. “The content of the statement is “substantially false”.
This is the third legal battle that Enrique undertakes against the British tabloids for illegally obtaining information about his private life. The prince achieved a historic victory against the Mirror group at the end of 2023 after a long and expensive trial, which ended with the payment of compensation of 163,000 euros. In January 2025, the son of Charles III reached a last-minute extrajudicial agreement with News Group Newspapers (NGN)—owned by tycoon Rupert Murdoch—which led the media group to acknowledge having committed a “serious intrusion” into his private life through “illegal activities” and to launch a “total and unequivocal” apology for what happened.
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