An exclusive story published by the former British tabloid the News of the World came directly from a hacked voicemail message that Prince Harry’s aide left for his personal assistant.
The Old Bailey has heard how some of Prince Harry’s aides’ phones were repeatedly hacked
The Old Bailey heard that the story came from a voicemail message that was hacked by a News of the World journalist; the story was about Prince Harry injuring himself on holiday.
Dr Rod Jaques left a message for Prince Harry’s personal assistant, Helen Asprey, that went into detail about the injuries the Prince suffered to his shoulder and foot whilst on holiday.
The Sunday tabloid published the story in 2005 with the headline reading ‘Harry gets two new Nazi injuries’ and claimed this may damage his chances of getting into Sandhurst Military Academy.
The jury was shown the transcript of the hacked message which included great detail about the injury and possible treatments that could be used. Dr Jaques told the police “the message was for Helen Asprey and her alone.”
Clive Goodman emailed Andy Coulson in 2005 saying the information had been “scammed from Helen Asprey so it’s solid.” Ms Asprey told the jury that she became aware she had problems with her voicemails back in 2005. She also told the court “Messages not previously listened to were being described as old rather than new, and the PIN number was changing and being reset regularly, sometimes several times a day.”
Another aide and now godfather to Prince George, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton’s voicemail was also hacked repeatedly by the newspaper. One of his messages was said to be the source behind the story of Prince Harry cheating in his Sandhurst exams. This is when the newspaper reported that Prince Harry allegedly asked his aides for help on an essay he was doing about the siege of the Iranian Embassy.
photo credit: UK in Brazil via photopin cc
