UK: Prince Harry and Elton John take legal action against publisher of Daily Mail

Prince Harry and Elton John are among six people suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, alleging the British tabloid illegally obtained information about them, their lawyers said Thursday.

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The group found compelling and deeply troubling evidence that they were victims of gross violations of their privacy by Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), lawyers said.

Prince Harry and Elton John were joined by the singer’s husband David Furnish, actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost as well as Doreen Lawrence, the mother of young Briton Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in 1993 by a racist.

The latter also took legal action against media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s group, which notably published the tabloid The Sun.

According to lawyers for the six plaintiffs, ANL hired private detectives to wiretap six people, either in their cars or at their homes.

They also claim that police were paid off with “corrupt links to private investigators” to obtain information, medical data was “obtained fraudulently” and bank accounts and financial information were accessed “through illegal means and manipulation”.

“We absolutely and unequivocally condemn these grotesque defamations, which are nothing more than a planned and directed attempt to drag the Mail headlines into a wiretapping scandal over 30-year-old stories,” ANL responded.

The British tabloid press was rocked ten years ago by several scandals of illegal wiretapping that had been practiced since the early 2000s.

It began in 2005 with the tapping of Princes William and Harry’s collaborators’ messengers, but emotions peaked in the summer of 2011 when the tabloid News of the World listened to the missing man’s voicemail. Dead schoolgirl Millie Dowler is found.

The revelations led to the disastrous closure of media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday tabloid, which paid Millie Dowler’s family two million pounds in an amicable settlement.

While many people have sued tabloids after they were tapped, this is the first time such lawsuits have been brought against the publisher of the Daily Mail.