LONDON CALLING

Omid Scobie Arrives in Court for Prince Harry’s Phone-Hacking Trial

Harry and Meghan’s biographer is expected to say editor Piers Morgan knew phones were being hacked.

Omid Scobie, the sympathetic biographer of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, arrived at London’s High Court on Monday morning to give evidence in Harry’s phone-hacking case against British tabloid publishers Mirror Group Newspapers. Scobie, according to documents already submitted to the court, is likely to say that then-Mirror editor Piers Morgan, who has since become one of the couple’s most vituperative critics, knew voice messages on cellphones were being hacked to provide stories for the paper. Morgan has always denied hacking or ordering phones to be hacked but has also appeared to admit, in several interviews, that he knew the practice was widespread. Court papers suggest Scobie will testify that when he interned at the showbiz desk of MGN Sunday paper The People, he “was given a list of mobile telephone numbers and a verbal description of how to listen to voicemails, as if it were a routine news gathering technique.” Scobie will say that he saw Morgan being “told that information had come from voicemails,” when the editor questioned the provenance of a story about the singer Kylie Minogue.