Prince Harry defends himself at London High Court
In April 2020, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan retire from their royal duties and move to the USA. The British Home Office then decided to grant the royal only sporadic police protection in his home country. The son of King Charles feels misunderstood.
In his legal dispute over police protection in the UK, Prince Harry has described his move to the USA as by no means a free decision. He does not agree with the assertion that he decided to no longer be a "working member" of the royal family, his lawyer Shaheed Fatima told London's High Court. Rather, he and his wife Meghan had felt compelled to their "great sadness to step down from this role and leave the country in 2020", the 39-year-old prince asserted in a statement read out by his lawyer.
"Britain is my home," the youngest son of King Charles III continued in the statement. He wants his children to feel just as comfortable there as they do in their current place of residence in the USA. However, this would not be possible "if it is not possible to protect them on British soil".
Harry and his wife Meghan retired from their royal duties in April 2020 and now live in California with their two young children. As a result, they lost their taxpayer-funded police protection in the UK. The British Home Office subsequently refused to deploy police officers for his security during visits to Harry's home country, although the prince himself wanted to pay for the costs of the deployment.
The new proceedings before the High Court, which began on Tuesday, are specifically about the Home Office's decision in February 2020 to only grant Prince Harry police protection on a case-by-case basis. Harry's lawyer had accused the committee responsible of making its decision to grant the fifth in line to the British throne less protection on the basis of an inadequate security analysis.
However, lawyer James Eadie, who is representing the Home Office in the case, defended the limited protection. The fact that Prince Harry only receives police protection under "certain conditions" and "depending on the context" is due to the "change in his status", which the prince himself brought about with the decision to become "a member of the royal family without an official function".
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- Despite King Charles III's son, Prince Harry, expressing his desire for his children to feel at home in the UK, the lack of sufficient police protection has prevented this.
- The British Royal Family, led by King Charles III, faced scrutiny and controversy as Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle decided to step down from their royal duties and pursue a life in the entertainment industry in the USA.
- In the midst of the legal dispute over police protection in the UK, Prince Harry argued that the process of retiring from the British Royal Family and moving to the USA was not a voluntary choice but one driven by necessity.
Source: www.ntv.de
