A key whistleblower supporting a legal claim headed by Prince Harry and Doreen Lawrence against the publisher of the Daily Mail appears to have dealt a last-minute blow to the case against the media group.

Just weeks before a high court trial, Jonathan Rees, a private investigator who has supported claims of unlawful news gathering at Associated Newspapers , has contradicted a central allegation in the claimants’ case.

Speaking to C4’s Dispatches, Rees denied admitting to Lawrence that he was involved in bugging her after the racially motivated murder of her 18-year-old son, Stephen, in 1993.

Lawrence had claimed in a witness statement drafted before trial that private investigators had admitted tapping her landlines, hacking her voicemails and bugging a cafe where she used to hold

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