UK’s Prince Harry victim of phone hacking, court rules

Britain’s Prince Harry was a victim of phone hacking by Mirror Group Newspapers, a U.K. court ruled on Friday.

Justice Timothy Fancourt said that the prince’s personal mobile phone was targeted between 2003 and 2009, and that there was “extensive” phone hacking by the newspaper group from 2006 to 2011.

Prince Harry has been awarded £140,600 ($179,600) in damages.

The Duke of Sussex became the first senior British royal in 130 years to appear in a witness box at a court trial when he testified in June. He told the court that the phone hacking “affected every area of my life,” and “created a huge amount of paranoia in my relationships. I would become immediately suspicious of anyone that was named in a story about me.”

Throughout the trial, MGN — the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People — maintained that it had not employed phone hacking tactics, and that its reporters obtained their scoops through tips and other above-board means.

The suit against the newspaper chain is one of several that Prince Harry has launched in recent years. He has campaigned to “reform” the U.K.’s media, which he views as his “life’s work.”