Harry loses phone at nightclub

2008-07-25 14:00

Maseru - Britain's Prince Harry, briefly dumped by his girlfriend last year over compromising text messages, was breathing a sigh of relief on Friday after being reunited with a cell phone stolen in Lesotho.

Sources in the Lesotho Defence Force, who had been providing Harry with security during his ongoing visit to the landlocked African kingdom, had revealed the phone was stolen while he was at a nightclub last week but was later recovered from the thief.

"Harry was at a nightclub in Butha Buthe when the thug stole his phone and ran away with it," said one source on condition of anonymity.

"When we eventually found the culprit it took quite some time to explain to him that he had stolen from the prince. To him Prince Harry was just one of those white guys."

Charity projects

Another source said that the prince declined to press charges against the thief and was just relieved that his contacts list had not gone astray.

"The prince was quite happy to have his phone recovered but he requested that the matter not be reported to the police," said the source.

"The only thing he was worried about were his contacts and not the phone itself." A police spokesperson was unable to comment on the theft as no report had been filed.

The 23-year-old, who was third in line to the throne, had been in Lesotho for several weeks working on charity projects. He was understood to have been with a group of friends at the nightclub in a town to the north of the capital Maseru.

The prince had been a frequent visitor to Lesotho, spending two months working here during his gap year between school and university, and made a television documentary about the plight of the country's children in 2004.

Harry's relationship with his girlfriend Chelsy Davy went through a rocky patch late last year after she reportedly found text messages on his phone although the couple had since patched things up.

- AFP