maandag, september 13, 2004
A French appeals court will rule Tuesday whether three photographers who were part of the press pack that chased Princess Diana on the night of her death in Paris in 1997 took pictures that broke privacy laws.
The photographers -- Fabrice Chassery, Jacques Langevin and Christian Martinez -- were acquitted in November 2003, but state prosecutors and Mohamed Al-Fayed, the millionaire Egyptian father of Diana's companion Dodi, appealed. They stand accused of violating French privacy laws by taking photos of Diana and Dodi as they left the Ritz hotel in Paris owned by Al-Fayed and then as the two lay in the wreckage of their Mercedes after their fatal car crash.
Langevin took two photos at the Ritz, Chassery took one at the hotel and one after the accident, and Martinez snapped two photos after the crash in a tunnel near the Seine.
At a June hearing before the Paris appeals court, state prosecutors asked that the photographers who took photos at the scene of the accident again be acquitted, invoking freedom of press laws. But prosecutors left the door open for Langevin and Chassery to face punishment for their work at the Ritz, provided that the court determined that it indeed constituted a violation of privacy law.
"I did the job I was supposed to do," Langevin, the only one of the three photographers to attend the June hearing, told the court. "I don't feel I infringed on the intimacy of a private place."
Chassery, a freelance photographer at the time, Langevin, who worked for the Sygma/Corbis agency, and Martinez of the Angeli agency, were originally cleared of the charges against them when a court determined that they did not photograph any intimate moments and that the inside of a car did not constitute a private place.
Bron: AFP.
The photographers -- Fabrice Chassery, Jacques Langevin and Christian Martinez -- were acquitted in November 2003, but state prosecutors and Mohamed Al-Fayed, the millionaire Egyptian father of Diana's companion Dodi, appealed. They stand accused of violating French privacy laws by taking photos of Diana and Dodi as they left the Ritz hotel in Paris owned by Al-Fayed and then as the two lay in the wreckage of their Mercedes after their fatal car crash.
Langevin took two photos at the Ritz, Chassery took one at the hotel and one after the accident, and Martinez snapped two photos after the crash in a tunnel near the Seine.
At a June hearing before the Paris appeals court, state prosecutors asked that the photographers who took photos at the scene of the accident again be acquitted, invoking freedom of press laws. But prosecutors left the door open for Langevin and Chassery to face punishment for their work at the Ritz, provided that the court determined that it indeed constituted a violation of privacy law.
"I did the job I was supposed to do," Langevin, the only one of the three photographers to attend the June hearing, told the court. "I don't feel I infringed on the intimacy of a private place."
Chassery, a freelance photographer at the time, Langevin, who worked for the Sygma/Corbis agency, and Martinez of the Angeli agency, were originally cleared of the charges against them when a court determined that they did not photograph any intimate moments and that the inside of a car did not constitute a private place.
Bron: AFP.
# posted by Jan-Edward : 15:17
|
|