ISTANBUL

Britain’s Prince Harry appeared in court on Monday as his privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail entered its third and final phase.

Prince Harry, the duke of Sussex, is one of seven prominent plaintiffs who claim the tabloid’s publisher violated their privacy by using illegal methods to obtain information for attention-grabbing stories, the US’ ABC News reported.

The lawsuit, filed by Harry along with singer Elton John and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, alleges that Associated Newspapers Ltd. hired private investigators to bug their cars, obtain private records, and eavesdrop on phone calls.

The publisher has rejected the claims, calling them preposterous.

Opening the case, attorney David Sherborne said Associated Newspapers had fostered a decades-long culture of unlawfully digging up dirt “that wrecked the lives of so many.”

He also said the company’s repeated denials, alleged record destruction, and “masses upon masses of missing documents” had hindered the claimants from finding out exactly what the newspapers had done.

“They swore that they were a clean ship,” Sherborne said, adding: “Associated knew that these emphatic denials were not true … They knew they had skeletons in their closet.”

The case, being heard at London’s High Court, is expected to last nine weeks and will see Harry take the stand again — following his landmark appearance in 2023 as the first senior royal in more than a century to testify in court.

Harry won a court ruling in 2023 that found the Daily Mirror’s publishers carried out “widespread and habitual” phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch, the founder of News Corp, whose UK tabloids include The Sun, issued a rare apology for repeatedly intruding into his life and agreed to pay significant damages to settle his privacy case.