Updated ,first published
London: A charity founded by Prince Harry in honor of his late mother Princess Diana, which he abandoned following a high-profile controversy, is suing the British monarch for defamation in London’s High Court, court records showed on Friday.
Harry, the youngest son of King Charles, founded Sentebale in 2006 to help young people living with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana. but he resigned as a security guard in March last year after publicly disagreeing with the chairman of the board, Sophie Chandauka.
According to records made public on Friday, Sentebale filed defamation claims last month in the High Court against Harry and one of his close friends Mark Dyer, who was also a trustee of the charity.
The charity said it was seeking “intervention, protection, and restitution” from the court following a “malicious media campaign” carried out since March last year that “caused operational disruption and reputational damage to the charity, its leadership, and its strategic partners”.
“The case was brought against Prince Harry and Mark Dyer, who were identified through evidence as the architects of the malicious media campaign, which has gone viral and led to online bullying attacks directed at the charity and its leadership,” the agency said in a statement.
A spokesman for Harry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case puts the Duke of Sussex in an unusual position as a defendant in the High Court.
For the past three years, he has frequently been on the other side of the case as the lead plaintiff in invasion of privacy suits against Britain’s most popular tabloids on allegations of phone hacking and illegal hacking by journalists and private eyes they hired.
Sentebale’s co-founder, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and the then board of trustees also joined Harry in leaving the charity, which he helped set up nine years after Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris and which means “forget me” in the local language of Lesotho in southern Africa.
During the public confrontation last year, Chandauka reported him and the trustees to the UK’s charity regulator over allegations of bullying and harassment.
Chandauka told Sky News that filming one of Harry’s Netflix shows had interfered with Sentebale’s planned sponsorship and an incident with his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, had become a source of friction.
The 41-year-old prince said what had happened was “heartbreaking” and that “blatant lies hurt those who have invested decades” in helping children in southern Africa.
After inspection, The Charity Commission reported in August that it found no evidence of bullyingbut he said there has been a weak administration and criticized all sides for allowing the internal conflict to be exposed.
“Sentebale’s problems became public, enabling a serious crisis to tarnish the charity’s reputation, risk overshadowing many of its achievements, and jeopardize the organisation’s ability to deliver aid to the beneficiaries it was created to serve,” commission chief executive David Holdsworth said in a statement at the time.
Reuters, AP
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