Prince Harry suffers major setback days before lawsuit verdict announcement

Prince Harry, along with six other claimants, received some upsetting update on the phone hacking cases against the Daily Mail publisher as a verdict is soon to be announced.

King Charles’s younger son had claimed that the British tabloid had used illicit and illegal methods of acquiring information for their articles. The Duke of Sussex had stressed that none of the people in his close circle would reveal intimate details.

Meanwhile, Sir Elton John, David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, and Sir Simon Hughes have also presented their evidence and witness statements in the course of the 10-week trial.

Senior current and former journalists and staff at Associated have also given evidence.

However, a key witness in the case, which could be considered as a decider of the verdict, backtracked his claims, suggesting that the claimants have been “conned” in statement on Monday.

Private investigator Gavin Burrows, appeared in court via video where he said that his signatures had been forged on that statement that said he “targeted hundreds, possibly thousands of people”.

Burrows told the court that the statement had “nothing to do with me”.

“You have got to explain to your claimants how you have been conned,” he said during an exchange with Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne.

“This thing is based on a pack of lies.”

Harry’s attorney argued that Burrows is only changing his statement because the private investigator had falling out with journalist Graham Johnson.

But Burrows remained adamant that the “whole thing is a thing of fiction”.

He told the court he had never worked for or been paid by Associated.

The verdict is expected to be announced later this month after the closing statements are delivered.