A charity co-founded by Prince Harry in honour of his late mother, Princess Diana, is suing the British royal for libel at the High Court in London, court records revealed on Friday.
The Duke of Sussex, King Charles’s younger son, established Sentebale in 2006 to support young people with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana. He resigned as a patron in March 2025 after a public falling-out with its board chair, Sophie Chandauka.
Sentebale lodged the defamation claim last month against Harry and his close friend Mark Dyer, who was also a trustee of the organisation.
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.
Dr Sophie Chandauka previously said Harry’s “unleashing of the Sussex machine” had broken the relationship between the prince and the 540 people who work for the Sentebale charity.
She claimed the Duke briefed the press about stepping back from the charity before letting her or the charity’s executive director know first.
“The only reason I’m here… is because at some point on Tuesday, Prince Harry authorised the release of a damaging piece of news to the outside world without informing me or my country directors, or my executive director,” Dr Chandauka said on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips in March last year.
Adding: “And can you imagine what that attack has done for me, on me and the 540 individuals in the Sentebale organisations and their family?
“That is an example of harassment and bullying at scale.”
After a review, the Charity Commission reported it had found no evidence of bullying, but said there had been weak governance and criticised all parties for allowing an internal dispute to become public.
