A judge in London has ruled that Prince Harry can take the British government to court to ensure that he and his family receive security while in his homeland.
As reported by Yahoo, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex lost publicly funded U.K. police protection when they quit royal life and moved to the United States in 2020. The Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (RAVEC) reduced Harry’s security after he and Meghan Markle stepped down from their roles as senior working members of the British royal family.
Harry decided to fight the decision and on Friday a London judge ruled that his case can go to a full hearing at the High Court in London. According to CBS News, the judge said “a conclusion at the permission stage that a case is arguable is some distance from a conclusion that the case will succeed at final hearing.”
The Duchess of Sussex revealed in her now-infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey that she pleaded with the royal family not to remove the security, Newsweek reports.
Harry said to Winfrey, “The biggest concern was that while we were in Canada, in someone else’s house, I then got told at short notice security was going to be removed. By this point, courtesy of the Daily Mail, the world knew our exact location. So suddenly it dawned on me, ‘Hang on a second. The borders could be closed. We’re going to have our security removed. Who knows how long lockdown’s going to be? The world knows where we are. It’s not safe. It’s not secure’.”
The prince has offered to personally pay for police security when his family visits Great Britain, but the government won’t allow it.
He is apprehensive about taking son Archie, 3, and 1-year-old daughter Lilibet to the U.K. because it is not safe, according to CBS News. Meanwhile, Newsweek reports that the couple has also experienced two privacy intrusions at their California home.
“He says that since birth, he’s been born into a world that requires a level security,” said Omid Scobie, ABC News royal contributor and the author of “Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of A Modern Royal Family,” according to the Yahoo report. “Not just to keep himself safe, but also his extended family, the people he marries, the children he has.”
The prince has a private U.S. security team, CBS News reports, but the team does not have sufficient jurisdiction outside of the country and lacks access to intelligence information in the U.K.
“The U.K. will always be Prince Harry’s home and a country he wants his wife and children to be safe in,” said a letter from his legal representatives that was submitted to the court in January, Newsweek reports. “With the lack of police protection, comes too great a personal risk. Prince Harry hopes that his petition — after close to two years of pleas for security in the U.K. — will resolve this situation.”
The case has not yet been assigned a court date, according to CBS News.
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