Prince Harry will take his a long-awaited day in court against Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids on Monday, when his lawsuit against News Group Newspapers for the illegal collection of false information will be heard in London.

Harry himself is not expected to stand for the first two weeks of the trial, which will be devoted to “routine problems” related to the behavior of the papers from the 1990s to the beginning of 2010, while the lawyers say that their journalists regularly. he stole the phone of prince and other famous people to get information.

However, the charges embroiled Mr. Murdoch and several former lieutenants. Lawyers for Harry, 40, the youngest son of King Charles III, will show that the News Group officials covered up and tried to destroy evidence of fraud and other improprieties.

Harry is one of only two appellants left from the original group of about 40; the rest, including actor Hugh Grant, settled with News Group. Another plaintiff, who is also due to stand trial, is Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labor Party, who claims the News Group hacked his phone and shot him for political reasons.

Harry has so far refused to settle, throwing away his suit as a last chance to come to terms with his darkest moment. In addition to wiretapping, tabloids hired private investigators and encouraged journalists to lie and lie to obtain personal information.

“One of the main reasons for watching this is to respond because I’m the last person to do this,” Harry said last month interview at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit.

He admitted that any settlement would not pay him his legal fees, and that the News Group strongly wants to settle the remaining cases out of court, it is not known if any lawsuits will follow his suit.

However, the prospect of a few days of testimony from the prince, who left Britain for Southern California in part because of what he said was the constant intrusion of the press into his life, ensures a high profile.

Harry has testified once, in June 2023 at a fraud trial against Mirror Group Newspapers. At the time, he was the first member of the royal family to appear in court since 1891, when Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, testified about wrongdoing in a baccarat game.

Timothy Fancourt, the judge in the 2023 and current trial, ruled that Harry had been abused”.common and unusual hacking,” and gave him 140,600 pounds, or 171,600 dollars. Harry settled the remainder of his claim against the Mirror Group for at least $400,000, or $488,000.

Lawyers involved in previous fraud cases said Harry had put himself at risk by exposing himself for several days under questioning. He cites 30 documents dating from 1996 to 2011, some of which say he was a drug addict. His lawyer, David Sherborne, said that was not true.

If Harry continues to refuse any claim from News Group, under English law he is at risk of paying more money if the court does not award him a similar amount at the end of the case. Although a last-minute settlement is still possible, lawyers said they appear to be willing to present their case in court.

“Harry seems to have come to terms with himself that this is a price to pay for what he believes to be the truth,” said Daniel Taylor, a London-based media lawyer who represented the former accusers. “His main priority is to take this case to court to expose what he believes are their biggest mistakes.”

This makes Mr. Murdoch’s old friends very upset. One of those that can be monitored illegally is Will Lewisa former News executive who helped oversee the company’s response to scandals in 2010 and 2011, and is now publisher of The Washington Post.

Harry’s lawyers say Mr. Lewis was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence of the theft by deleting files on the computer of Rebekah Brooks, the head of News UK, which was opened because it was hidden, according to the complaint filed by the plaintiffs.

The News Group reported that Ms. Brooks was asked to investigate the emails during her trial in 2014, and was cleared of the charges. Mr. Lewis has not been charged. He later became CEO of Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, before being named publisher of The Post in 2023.

“Any allegations of wrongdoing are not true,” Lewis said in a statement word to the Times June is over. “I have no further comment to make.”

The Lawyers for News Group says Harry is trying to turn the case into an indictment for wiretapping. In May, Judge Fancourt rejected a request by Harry’s lawyers to implicate Murdoch in the case, saying, “There is a desire on the part of the prosecutors to shoot at “trophy” targets, whether the prosecutors are shooting for political issues or people. popular.”

Mr Murdoch, 93, testified before the British Parliament in 2011 that he should not be charged with fraud, because he ran a global company with 53,000 employees. But he shut down the News of the World, the website most associated with hacking, and apologized.

For Harry, Mr. Murdoch remained a great enemy. Harry and his older brother, William, have long held, among others, the cause of the death of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997 while being followed by photographers.

In his memoirs, “.Save,” Harry explained that Murdoch’s politics were “to the right of the Taliban.”

Harry wrote: “I did not like his daily destruction of the Truth, his unfair scorn.” “I can’t think of a single person in the 300,000-year history of living things that has done so much damage to our entire sense of reality.”