Prince Harry wins damages for phone-hacking by Mirror newspapers

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Prince Harry was awarded 140,600 pounds ($180,743)after London’s High Court ruled on Friday he had been a victim of “modest” phone-hacking and other unlawful information gathering by journalists at Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).

The prince – who became the first senior royal to appear as a witness in court for 130 years at the trial in June – had sued MGN, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.

Harry said he was targeted by MGN for 15 years from 1996 and that more than 140 stories which appeared in its papers were the result of unlawful information gathering, though the trial only considered 33 of these.

Of those the judge found unlawful actions had contributed to 15 articles during a period when he concluded that there had been extensive phone-hacking and widespread unlawful actions at the newspapers, of which some executives and in-house lawyers were aware.

($1 = 0.7822 pounds)

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Kate Holton)

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