donderdag, oktober 23, 2003
Three French photographers who followed Princess Diana and her friend Dodi Al Fayed on the night of their fatal accident appear in a Paris court on invasion of privacy charges in the first ever criminal trial relating to the crash.
Jacques Langevin, Christian Martinez and Fabrice Chassery were among the eight paparazzi and one dispatch rider who were initially investigated on manslaughter and non-assistance charges but cleared before the case came to court. They are being prosecuted under France's strict privacy laws and face a theoretical punishment of a year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros.
Diana, divorced wife of British royal heir Prince Charles, was killed with Dodi and their driver Henri Paul on August 31, 1997 when their Mercedes limousine crashed at high speed in a road tunnel shortly after they left the Ritz hotel in central Paris.
The judicial investigation into the crash ruled that it was caused by a combination of excessive speed and the alcohol and prescription drugs found in the bloodstream of the chauffeur. Successive courts upheld the decision not to prosecute the photographers for any role they may have had.
Prosecutors in Friday's trial will cite in evidence six unpublished shots taken of Dodi inside the Mercedes at different stages of the journey -- outside the Ritz, during the chase by the photographers and also after the crash. At least some of the pictures also show Diana, lawyers said. The photographs appear in the dossier which the judge, prosecutor and defence lawyers will all have to hand in court, but it was unlikely that they would be shown to the public during the trial, court officials said.
The legal case will hinge on whether a car is always in law a private space into which photographers cannot intrude. "But does a car whose doors have had to be opened (as a result of the accident) still constitute a private space," asked lawyer Jean-Louis Pelletier.
The mysterious Fiat Uno in the underpass (which most people believe was never traced) that hit Diana's Mercedes, almost certainly belonged to a royal paparazzo called James Andanson. The photographer strenuously denied that he had even been in Paris on the night in question, though the paint on the Uno matched traces on the wrecked Mercedes, which it appears to have clipped. Andanson died under suspicious circumstances two years later. A month after his death, his offices in Paris were raided by three armed men in balaclavas, who shot a security guard in the foot and took away laptops, cameras and hard disks.
Bronnen: AFP, The Spectator.
Jacques Langevin, Christian Martinez and Fabrice Chassery were among the eight paparazzi and one dispatch rider who were initially investigated on manslaughter and non-assistance charges but cleared before the case came to court. They are being prosecuted under France's strict privacy laws and face a theoretical punishment of a year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros.
Diana, divorced wife of British royal heir Prince Charles, was killed with Dodi and their driver Henri Paul on August 31, 1997 when their Mercedes limousine crashed at high speed in a road tunnel shortly after they left the Ritz hotel in central Paris.
The judicial investigation into the crash ruled that it was caused by a combination of excessive speed and the alcohol and prescription drugs found in the bloodstream of the chauffeur. Successive courts upheld the decision not to prosecute the photographers for any role they may have had.
Prosecutors in Friday's trial will cite in evidence six unpublished shots taken of Dodi inside the Mercedes at different stages of the journey -- outside the Ritz, during the chase by the photographers and also after the crash. At least some of the pictures also show Diana, lawyers said. The photographs appear in the dossier which the judge, prosecutor and defence lawyers will all have to hand in court, but it was unlikely that they would be shown to the public during the trial, court officials said.
The legal case will hinge on whether a car is always in law a private space into which photographers cannot intrude. "But does a car whose doors have had to be opened (as a result of the accident) still constitute a private space," asked lawyer Jean-Louis Pelletier.
The mysterious Fiat Uno in the underpass (which most people believe was never traced) that hit Diana's Mercedes, almost certainly belonged to a royal paparazzo called James Andanson. The photographer strenuously denied that he had even been in Paris on the night in question, though the paint on the Uno matched traces on the wrecked Mercedes, which it appears to have clipped. Andanson died under suspicious circumstances two years later. A month after his death, his offices in Paris were raided by three armed men in balaclavas, who shot a security guard in the foot and took away laptops, cameras and hard disks.
Bronnen: AFP, The Spectator.
# posted by Jan-Edward : 22:58
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