Prince Harry makes emotional testimony in Daily Mail trial, claims press made Meghan’s life ‘absolute misery’

Prince Harry has fought back tears as he spoke about his wife during an emotional testimony in his high-profile case against the publisher of the Daily Mail newspaper.

The Duke of Sussex, along with six other prominent figures, including singer Elton John and actress Elizabeth Hurley, are suing the Mail’s publisher Associated Newspapers for violations of their privacy from the early 1990s until the 2010s.

After hours in the witness box at London’s High Court on Wednesday (local time), Harry was reportedly on the brink of tears as he described the toll his long-running battle with the British media has taken on him and his wife, Meghan Markle.

“I think it is fundamentally wrong to have to put all of us through this again when all we are were asking for is an apology and some accountability,” the Duke said, according to Reuters.

“It is a horrible experience and the worst of it is that by sitting up here and taking a stand against them.

“They continue to come after me, they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery,” he added as he held back tears.

Harry also firmly rejected claims that he was friends with journalists or that his own friends were the cause of leaks about his private life.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I am not friends with any of these journalists and I never have been,” the 41-year-old told Associated Newspapers’ barrister, Antony White.

“My social circles were not leaky. I want to make that absolutely clear,” he added.

Harry’s case focuses on 14 articles his lawyer, David Sherborne, alleges were produced using unlawful methods, including by hacking voicemail messages, bugging landlines and obtaining information by deception.

Mr White argued instead the information in those articles was obtained legitimately, noting that a former Royal Editor of the Mail on Sunday, Katie Nicholl, would socialise with the Prince.

Harry strongly disputed the suggestion.

“If the sources were so good and she was hanging out with all my friends, then why was she using private investigators who have been connected to all the unlawful information gathering?” he asked.

Nicholl frequently accompanied the Prince on his royal tours. Harry explained that “you have to have some kind of relationship with them,” even while “knowing full well the kind of stories they have written about me.”

Associated Newspapers, which also publishes the Mail on Sunday, has called the allegations “preposterous smears”, claiming their journalists had legitimate sources for information, including from the celebrities’ friends and acquaintances.

Prince Harry was first present in the courtroom on Monday for the first day of the trial, where Mr Sherborne, quoted the Prince in his written submission as saying the Mail’s alleged activity drove him “paranoid beyond belief”.

He said it was “disturbing to feel that (his) every move, thought or feeling was being tracked and monitored just for the Mail to make money out of it.”

He said the “intrusion” was “terrifying” and created a “massive strain on personal relationships”, ultimately “isolating” him.

The trial is expected to last nine weeks.