London (AP) – Prince Harry was treated unfairly when he was stripped of his British security details, his lawyer told the judges of the Court of Appeals on Tuesday.
Harry, whose rare appearance in the Court indicated the importance of the case for him, lost his protection financed by the Government in February 2020 after he resigned from his role as a member who works from the royal family and moved to the United States.
A judge of the Superior Court ruled last year that the decision of a government panel to provide security “spoke” for the Duke of Sussex so that it is necessary was not illegal, irrational or unjustified.
But the lawyer Shaheed Fatima argued that a group that evaluated Harry’s security needs could not follow his own process and carry out a risk management evaluation.
“The appellant does not accept that speaking means better,” Fatima said. “In fact, in its submission, it means that it has a bone for a different, unjustified and lower treatment.”
A government lawyer said that Harry’s argument in the lower court was discovered that he was based precisely on an “inappropriate and formalistic interpretation” of the government’s security review that was badly conceived.
“The appeal must be characterized in the same way,” said lawyer James Eadie. “It implies a continuous failure to see the wood of the trees, the advanced propositions of the evidence only reading small parts of the evidence, and now the judgment, out of context and ignoring the entire image.”
The hearing before three judges of the Court of Appeals must end on Wednesday, and a written decision is expected later. While the audience was broadcast live, some would be held behind closed doors for discussion security discussions.
Harry arrived at the Court with a small security detail complemented with court officers. He jumped to the cameras before disappearing in a private entrance.
Harry, 40, the youngest son of King Carlos III, has resorted to the Royal Family Convention by bringing the government and sensationalist press to the Court, where he has a mixed record.
But Harry rarely appears to the Court hearings, making only a few appearances in the last two years. That included the trial of one of his cases of telephone piracy against the British tabloids when he was the first member of the royal family to enter the witness box in more than a century.
Harry said that he and his family are in danger when they visit their homeland due to the hostility aimed at him and his wife, Meghan Markle, on social networks and through implacable dogs of the media.
After the protection sponsored by the government is denied, Harry faced at least two serious security threats, said his lawyer in judicial documents. Al-Qaida had published a document that said that Harry’s murder would please Muslims, and he and his wife were involved in a dangerous persecution of paparazzi in New York.
He lost a related judicial case in which he sought permission to pay privately a police detail when he was in the United Kingdom, but a judge denied that sacrifice after a government lawyer argued that officers should not be used as “private bodyguards for salary.”
Harry also launched a defamation case against The Daily Mail editor for an article that said he had tried to hide his efforts to continuously recover the security financed by the Government.
But he won a significant victory in the trial in 2023 against The Daily Mirror editor when a judge discovered that the piracy of the telephone on the tabloid was “broad and habitual.” He claimed a “monumental” victory in January when the Tabloids of the United Kingdom of Rupert Murdoch made an unprecedented apology for Inruud in his life for years and agreed to pay substantial damage to resolve their demand for privacy invasion.
It has a similar slope case against the mail editor.
