Meghan Markle is trying to stop Associated Newspapers Limited from disclosing the private identities of five friends who spoke on the Duchess of Sussexs behalf in an anonymous People magazine feature last year.

As part of her ongoing lawsuit against the tabloids, the royals legal team filed court documents on Thursday, seen by HuffPost, to stop Associated Newspapers which owns the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday from revealing the names.

In a witness statement filed on behalf of the duchess in High Court, Meghan claims that the tabloid wants to publish the names to expose them in the public domain for no reason other than clickbait and commercial gain, calling the move vicious and saying it would threaten their emotional and mental wellbeing.

Each of these women is a private citizen, young mother, and each has a basic right to privacy, she said, adding that the women made a choice on their own to speak anonymously with a U.S. media outlet more than a year ago, to defend me from the bullying behaviour of Britains tabloid media.

These five women are not on trial, and nor am I, the duchess continued. The publisher of the Mail on Sunday is the one on trial. It is this publisher that acted unlawfully and is attempting to evade accountability; to create a circus and distract from the point of this case - that the Mail on Sunday unlawfully published my private letter.