A collected photo of Prince Harry

LONDON, Jan 21, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Prince Harry was due Wednesday to take the 
stand at a court in London as the first witness called in his joint claim 
that two UK tabloid newspapers unlawfully gathered information about him.

On the third day of a highly-anticipated nine-week trial Harry will testify 
against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), the publisher of the Daily Mail and 
The Mail on Sunday, alleging illegal privacy breaches.

Brought 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.

He is scheduled to begin giving evidence at the High Court in London at 11:30 
am (1130 GMT).

Harry 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 agreed to pay him "substantial damages" for privacy breaches, 
including phone hacking.

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".

- 'Paranoid' -

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

Ahead of his evidence session Wednesday, he sat in the High Court on Monday 
and during some of Tuesday's proceedings.

Hurley and Frost, who joined him, are also set to give evidence along with 
all the other claimants.

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

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

He added in opening arguments that it "knew they had skeletons in their 
closet" and that years of "emphatic denials were not true".

In written testimony unveiled Monday, Harry said ANL's alleged conduct had 
left him "paranoid beyond belief" while John said his family felt "violated".

But Antony White, ANL's lawyer, countered Tuesday that the trial will show 
that it has "provided an explanation through a long series of witnesses of 
the sourcing by its journalists of the 50-plus articles" concerned.

"Overall, it provides a compelling account of a pattern of legitimate 
sourcing of articles," he added.

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