Michael Holden
London: A charity co-founded by Prince Harry in honour of his late mother Princess Diana, which he quit following a high-profile dispute, is suing the British royal for defamation at the High Court in London, a court record showed on Friday.
Harry, the younger son of King Charles, co-founded Sentebale in 2006 to help young people with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana but resigned as a patron in March last year after a public falling-out with its chair of the board, Sophie Chandauka.
According to a record made public on Friday, Sentebale lodged a defamation claim last month at the High Court against Harry and one of his close friends Mark Dyer, who was also a trustee of the charity.
There were no details as to what the lawsuit involved.
Neither Harry’s spokesperson nor the charity immediately responded to a request for comment.
The charity’s co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and the board of trustees joined Harry in leaving Sentebale, which he helped set up nine years after Diana was killed in a Paris car crash and which means “forget-me-not” in the local language of Lesotho in southern Africa.
The 41-year-old prince called the breakdown in the relationship with Chandauka devastating, while she reported him and the trustees to Britain’s charity regulator for alleged bullying and harassment.
