The private investigator whose alleged confessions prompted the high-profile claimants, including Prince Harry, to sue Associated Newspapers has been comprehensively discredited.
In a 2021 witness statement, Mr Burrows appeared to admit targeting “hundreds, possibly thousands of people” through voicemail hacking, landline tapping and accessing financial and medical information for a journalist at the Mail on Sunday.
However, when Mr Burrows, 55, was finally called as a witness, he described his apparent confession as a “falsehood”, “a stitch-up”, “lies”, “complete and utter untruth” and “a thing of fiction”.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Nicklin described the private investigator’s credibility as having been “comprehensively undermined,” noting his evidence was “argumentative, evasive, internally inconsistent and, at times, extraordinary”.
He ruled that Mr Burrows provided “no reliable support” for the claims and found that the highly incriminating 2021 witness statement attributed to him could not even be proven to be his own words.
Mr Justice Nicklin said: “I do not consider Mr Burrows to be a witness on whom I can safely rely for any disputed proposition unless it is clearly corroborated by reliable independent evidence.”
The judge also noted a “serious error of professional judgment” by the claimants’ solicitor, Anjlee Sangani, in certifying the statement.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
