Mirror journalists working under the editorship of Piers Morgan hacked the phone of Diana, Princess of Wales, the Duke of Sussex’s barrister has claimed.
David Sherborne said it was “obvious” that Mr Morgan had obtained private information about the late Princess from her voice messages.
As the barrister opened the Duke’s case against Mirror Group Newspapers(MGN), he said the late Princess had become a “huge target” for the publisher, adding that its unlawful activities would have also affected her son.
He said: “It is part of our case that the interception of her messages would necessarily have involved obtaining information about the young Prince.”
The Duke is suing MGN, claiming that he was the victim of unlawful information gathering, including phone hacking.
He has pleaded 140 articles published in the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and The People between 1996 and 2010, which he alleged were obtained through illegal means.
Of those, 33 have been selected as a sample on which to base his case.
Letters to Mr Barrymore
Mr Sherborne read out extracts of letters sent between the late Princess and Michael Barrymore, the TV personality and entertainer, in 1997, shortly before she died.
Barrymore was “struggling” at the time because it had been made public that he was gay. He was in the process of an “acrimonious” divorce, and was being treated for alcohol and drug addiction.
In one letter, dated April 25, 1997, the late Princess said she was “devastated” to hear the Mirror had been calling her office for information about various meetings between them.
“No one here had any idea,” she wrote. “My private and precious matter has become public property.”
Mr Sherborne then quoted from Mr Morgan’s 2005 biography, The Insider, in which he wrote of Mr Barrymore: “The TV comic has recently been treated in a clinic for booze and drug addiction, and I’d heard rumours that Diana had been secretly comforting him.”
The barrister told the court: “How he heard, we say, is obvious.”
He added: “We say it is plainly that the Daily Mirror has been listening to the voicemail messages, and that is how they knew of the secret and highly sensitive meetings between Princess Diana and poor Mr Barrymore.”
‘Nightmare with the tabloids’
In one letter, the late Princess said she had endured “a nightmare with the tabloids” and told him she was there if he ever wanted to talk.
However, Mr Sherborne claimed Mr Barrymore had been “so frightened off” after the details of their meetings became public knowledge that he did not make contact.
“This is the isolation that this activity causes,” he added.
Andrew Green, representing MGN, said the claim that MGN journalists hacked a phone belonging to Diana, Princess of Wales, was “total speculation without any evidential basis whatsoever”.
He said: “The letters to Michael Barrymore are not evidence of voicemail interception and there is no other evidence. Plainly, no such finding can be made.”
Prince Harry claims Piers Morgan’s Mirror hacked Princess Diana. Prince Harry claims Piers Morgan’s Mirror hacked Princess Diana