Prince Harry to give evidence in phone hacking trial

Prince Harry will become the first British royal to appear in the witness box since the 1890s when he testifies at the High Court in London as part of his lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).What is the case about?
Harry and more than 100 other people are suing MGN – publisher of the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday People tabloids – accusing them of widespread unlawful activities between 1991 and 2011.

Those involved include actors, athletes, celebrities and people who simply had a connection to high-profile figures.

They say the group’s journalists or private investigators carried out phone hacking on an “industrial scale”, obtained their private details by deception and carried out other illicit acts to find out information about them.

MGN is contesting the claims and denies senior figures were aware of wrongdoing. It also argues some of the lawsuits were brought too late.What is phone hacking?
Phone hacking, the illegal interception of voicemails on mobile phones, first came to widespread attention in 2006 when the then-royal editor of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World (NoW) tabloid and a private investigator were arrested.

They pleaded guilty and were jailed in 2007. The NoW and senior figures at the UK operation of Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN) said hacking was limited to a rogue reporter.

But further revelations in 2011, including that a murdered schoolgirl had been targeted, led to the closure of the paper and a criminal trial.