Piers Morgan, the former director of the British tabloid Daily Mirror, was aware of the wiretapping, Prince Harry’s biographer said today, testifying in court, as part of the lawsuit filed against publishing company Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).

Harry, the youngest son of King Charles, and more than 100 other famous and lesser-known Britons, are accusing the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People newspapers of illegal wiretapping and other wrongdoing between 1991-2011 .

Omid Scobie, one of the authors of Finding Freedom, the unofficial biography of Harry and his wife Meghan, told the court today that Piers Morgan had secured a report in 2002 about singer Kylie Minogue after being told it came from from voicemail interception. He explained that he was working as an intern in the newspaper’s gossip column at the time when Morgan learned that the report was wiretapped. “Pearce appeared reassured by it,” he commented.

Piers Morgan, who now works for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, denies any involvement in the case and says he had no knowledge of the wiretapping or other illegal activities. “I’m not going to take any lessons in breach of privacy from Prince Harry, someone who has spent the last three years mercilessly and cynically invading the privacy of the royal family to make huge profits and told a bunch of lies about them,” Morgan told the television channel ITV News last week.

In his testimony, Scobie also said he was given a list of mobile phones to hack when he was working as a journalism student at the Sunday People a few months earlier.

MGN’s lawyer Andrew Green argued that these two incidents never happened and that Scobie is presenting “false memories”, which the latter said offended him. He also denied that he has an “interest” in helping Harry or that he is his friend or “mouthpiece”, as the British tabloids call him.

Former Sunday Mirror journalist Dan Evans, who was convicted in 2014 of wiretapping, also gave evidence today and told the court he was being pressured by executives at the group to hack into phones to write reports.

The trial is expected to last seven weeks and Harry is due to testify himself in early June – the first member of the British royal family to testify in court since the 19th century.