UNITED KINGDOM : Prince Harry has claimed that a long-running tabloid rumour that King Charles III was not his biological father was an attempt to oust him from the British Royal family, saying this rumour had been “damaging” to him over the years.
The Duke of Sussex said during his testimony before a judge in the London High Court that such tales were cruel at a time when he was only 18 and had lost his mother merely a few years ago.
In his witness statement, Harry cited a 2002 The People story titled “Plot to Rob the DNA of Harry,” which reported a detailed bid to steal Duke’s DNA samples in order to check his percentage.
Prince has sued the Mirror Group of Newspapers, which also publishes The Sunday Mirror, The Mirror, and The Sunday People.
He has also charged these newspapers’ journalists with unlawfully tapping phones and engaging in other criminal practises in order to collect information about his personal and private life.
Prince Harry’s mother, the late Princess Diana, had an affair with Major James Hewitt from 1986 to 1991. She disclosed it to Martin Basheer during a 1995 BBC Panorama interview.
Harry described the tales about the rumours as ‘cruel,” saying he was only 18 years old when the article was published.
“At the time, when I was 18 and had lost my mother just six years earlier, stories such as this felt very damaging and very real to me,” the Duke of Sussex said in court.
He questioned, “Were the newspapers eager to sow discord among the populace that I might be expelled from the Royal Family?”
Harry stated in his statement that Hewitt and his mother did not meet until after Harry was born in 1984, and the MGN reporters were aware of this.
“Numerous newspapers had reported a rumour that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had a relationship with after I was born,” he stated.
The duke stated that he was especially concerned by remarks made in the article that mentioned a “highly placed royal source” who gave information about the purported plot and how his DNA would be “sold abroad.”
He said that although he did not think the information originated from anyone at the palace, it did demonstrate that Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) had gathered information about him illegally for the piece.
The prince is suing MGN for damages, saying that journalists at its publications, which also include the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, were connected to practises like phone hacking, so-called “blagging,” or obtaining information by deception, and using private investigators for illegal actions.
He alleges that around 140 articles published between 1996 and 2010 contained data gathered using illegal methods, and 33 of these are being used as evidence in the trial.
MGN is contesting the allegations and has either refuted or refused to acknowledge each of them. The publisher also contends that some of the claimants filed their lawsuits too late.
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