Prince Harry's biographer tells court, former editor of Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan was aware of phone hacking

Prince Harry's biographer tells court, former editor of Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan was aware of phone hacking

The British royal would be the first to give in-person evidence since the 19th century

Omid Scobie, the co-author of ‘Finding Freedom,’ an unofficial 2020 biography of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, has told the London High Court that Piers Morgan, the former editor of the British tabloid The Daily Mirror, knew about phone hacking and other unlawful behaviour between 1991 and 2011.

Scobie provided evidence as part of the lawsuit filed by the royal family against the newspaper's publisher.

King Charles’ younger son Prince Harry and over 100 others have sued the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publishers of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People, accusing the newspapers of phone hacking.

The biographer informed the court that Morgan was "reassured" over a 2002 story about singer Kylie Minogue after being told it had come from a voicemail interception. Scobie said he was then working as an intern on the Mirror's gossip column.

A high-profile broadcaster, Morgan, who presently works for News Corp, run by Rupert Murdoch, has always denied involvement in, or having knowledge of phone hacking or any other illegal activity.

Recently, Morgan told ITV News, "I am not going to take lectures on privacy invasion from Prince Harry, somebody who has spent the last three years ruthlessly and cynically invading the royal family's privacy for vast commercial gain and told a pack of lies about them."

However, in his evidence, Scobie recounted he was given a list of mobile phone numbers to hack.

Andrew Green, MGN's lawyer, said the incidents never happened and told Scobie his recollections were a result of "false memory."

Mentioning that he took offence at the suggestion, Scobie denied having a "vested interest" in helping Prince Harry or that he was a friend or "mouthpiece" of the prince, as suggested by British tabloids.

Importantly, Dan Evans, the former Sunday Mirror journalist, who was convicted of phone hacking in 2014, also gave evidence to the court saying he had been a victim of "corporate grooming" by senior officials of MGN to hack phones to generate stories.

Lawyer Green, meanwhile maintained that MGN (now owned by Reach, one of Britain’s largest newspapers group), "strongly denies these allegations."

Expected to last seven weeks, the trial is initially focusing on generic allegations against MGN. It would later turn to the specific claims of Prince Harry and three others.