March 2 (UPI) — The royal editor for The Daily Mail on Monday denied using a private investigator to steal information about Prince Harry and his former girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
Prince Harry is suing Associated Newspapers Ltd., which owns The Daily Mail, along with six other plaintiffs including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, for using information they obtained illegally.
ANL denies all wrongdoing and said it gathered all information for its stories legally.
The testimony Monday mostly hinged on Mike Behr, a South Africa-based private investigator. Rebecca English, royal editor, said she knew Behr only as “a freelance journalist who could help on Africa stories,” The Guardian reported.
Lawyers asked English about an email from Behr that shared the exact flights that Davy was taking on a vacation with Harry in 2007.
Behr asked in the email if English and the Sun reporter “can plant someone next to her?”
Plaintiffs’ lawyer David Sherborne said the email “could only have been obtained from the computer system” of an airline. That means it came from a “blag” — British slang for a way of obtaining information illegally.
English responded that she didn’t remember the email or ask for those flight details.
“[Behr] was never asked for anything like this, ever,” she said. “That is something I would never even consider doing, now or then,” The Guardian reported.
Sherborne asked about planting someone next to Davy, and English replied: “It’s an absolutely shameful suggestion both by him and by you … clearly there’s no reply to this email, which emphasizes my belief that I never actually saw it.”
He then accused her of using illegal information in a story about a “make-or-break holiday” for the couple. But English said the information was likely from students at the University of Leeds, where Davy was enrolled, “who were friends with Chelsy Davy and part of her circle.”
Sherborne also asked English about a story with the headline, “How Harry fell in love,” from 2004. The story alleged that Harry had shared details of his relationship with Davy with friends at a campfire in Botswana. English said the campfire info came from her coworker Sam Greenhill.
“Sam told me that one of the people that Prince Harry had spoken with ’round the campfire got in touch with the newspaper when news of the relationship broke and gave this information to us,” The Independent reported.
“Prince Harry hadn’t told them who his girlfriend was but had described her so that, when the stories about Chelsy Davy broke, they realized the significance of what they had been told.
“I thought at the time that the tip was from a contact of Sam’s, but now understand it just came in to the news desk. I think that Sam gave it to me because he knew that I was new to my job as a royal reporter and thought it might be helpful to me.”
Harry testified last month that the people at the campfire — his “closest friends” — would not have shared that information, and if they had, there “would be a lot more out there.”