News Desk
ISLAMABAD/LONDON: A day after his memoir hit bookstores in the UK, Prince Harry has said that media claims that he boasted about killing 25 Taliban fighters during his deployment in Afghanistan were a “dangerous lie” and reported out of context.
Prince Harry’s memoir
Prince Harry has been criticised for discussing the killing of the Taliban in his memoir Spare, with some military figures stating that it was wrong to refer to the dead Taliban as “chess pieces”.
Talking to a US TV, Prince Harry accused the press of quoting him out of context as the spin endangered his family.
The estranged royal prince also defended his remarks, stating he had wanted to reduce veteran suicides.
Spare, which was published on Tuesday, has become the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever in the United Kingdom.
Some 400,000 copies of Spare have been bought in the UK despite many excerpts being leaked to the press ahead of its official release.
People in Spain were also able to get their hands on a copy of the memoir last week after it was accidentally released early in bookstores across the key European country.
In a short teaser clip from an interview with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show to promote Spare, Prince Harry said it had been a difficult period.
He said that the last few days had been hurtful and challenging, not being able to do anything about those leaks.
He then appeared to condemn some coverage of his memoir, saying: “Without a doubt, the most dangerous lie that they had been told, is that I somehow boasted about the number of Taliban I killed in Afghanistan.”
“If I heard anyone boasting about the killings, I would be angry. But it is a sheer lie.”
Prince Harry said that now the book was out, he hoped people would be able to “see the context”.
“It’s really troubling and very disturbing that they could get away with it because they had the context.
He said that his words were not dangerous but the spin of his words were very dangerous to his family. That is a choice they have made.
Referring to his openness about killing the Taliban fighters while on military duty in Afghanistan, he said the most important thing was to be honest and to give veterans the space to share their experiences “without any shame”.
He said that his whole goal and his attempt with sharing that detail was to reduce the number of [veteran] suicides.
