Prince Harry unfairly treated when stripped of U.K. security detail, lawyer says

Prince Harry speaks during a high level event sponsored by Lesotho at UN headquarters, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, file)

LONDON — Prince Harry was treated unfairly when he was stripped of his British security detail, his attorney told appeals court judges Tuesday.

Harry, whose rare appearance in court indicated the case’s importance to him, lost his government-funded protection in February 2020 after he stepped down from his role as a working member of the royal family and moved to the U.S.

A High Court judge ruled last year that a government panel’s decision to provide “bespoke” security for the Duke of Sussex on an as-needed basis was not unlawful, irrational or unjustified.

But attorney Shaheed Fatima argued that a group that evaluated Harry’s security needs failed to follow its own process and perform a risk management assessment.

“The appellant does not accept that bespoke means better,” Fatima said. “In fact, in his submission, it means that he has been singled out for different, unjustified and inferior treatment.”

A lawyer for the government said Harry’s argument in the lower court was accurately found to have been based on an “inappropriate, formalist interpretation” of the government’s security review that was misconceived.

“The appeal is fairly to be characterized in the same way,” attorney James Eadie said. “It involves a continued failure to see the wood for the trees, advancing propositions available only by reading small parts of the evidence, and now the judgment, out of context and ignoring the totality of the picture.”

The hearing before three Court of Appeal justices is due to end Wednesday and a written decision is expected later. While the hearing was livestreamed, some was to be conducted behind closed doors to discuss sensitive security details.

Harry arrived at court with a small security detail supplemented with court officers. He waved to cameras before disappearing into a private entrance.

Harry, 40, the younger son of King Charles III, has bucked royal family convention by taking the government and tabloid press to court, where he has a mixed record.

But Harry rarely shows up to court hearings, making only a few appearances in the past two years. That included the trial of one of his phone hacking cases against the British tabloids when he was the first senior member of the royal family to enter the witness box in more than 130 years.

Harry and his wife had stepped back from their official roles in the family in 2020 because they didn’t feel they were “being protected by the institution,” his lawyer said.

After doing so, a Home Office committee ruled there was “no basis for publicly funded security support for the duke and duchess within Great Britain.”

Harry claimed he and his family are endangered when visiting his homeland because of hostility aimed at him and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, on social media and through relentless hounding by news media.

After being denied government-sponsored protection, Harry faced at least two serious security threats, his lawyer said in court papers. Al-Qaida had published a document that said Harry’s assassination would please Muslims, and he and his wife were involved in a dangerous pursuit by paparazzi in New York.

He lost a related court case in which he sought permission to privately pay for a police detail when in the U.K. but a judge denied that offer after a government lawyer argued officers shouldn’t be used as “private bodyguards for the wealthy.”

Harry also dropped a libel case against the publisher of the Daily Mail for an article that said he had tried to hide his efforts to continue receiving government-funded security.

But he won a significant victory at trial in 2023 against the publisher of the Daily Mirror when a judge found that phone hacking at the tabloid was “widespread and habitual.” He claimed a “monumental” victory in January when Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. tabloids made an unprecedented apology for intruding in his life for years, and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.

He has a similar case pending against the publisher of the Mail.

Brian Melley, The Associated Press