A British television channel screened images on Wednesday taken immediately after the car crash that killed Princess Diana, defying a plea from her sons.
Diana's sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, had protested that showing photographs of the final moments of her life would be a "gross disrespect to their mother's memory."
Channel 4's documentary, Diana: The Witness in the Tunnel, showed photos of the scene inside the Mercedes carrying the princess after it crashed in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, killing her friend Dodi Fayed.
But a detailed black and white image of the rear of the car, where Diana lay, showing a doctor attending to her minutes after the incident, did not show her face -- which was obscured by a gray square.
"If it were your or my mother dying in that tunnel, would we want the scene broadcast to the nation?" the princes' private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, said in a letter to Channel 4 television which was publicly released on Tuesday.
Channel 4 defended the film as a responsible documentary.
"We do not show, nor have we ever considered showing, Diana's final moments," the station said in a statement.
The broadcaster said the documentary examined the role of photographers alleged to have pursued Diana and boyfriend Dodi Fayed from the Ritz Hotel to the Pont d'Alma tunnel, where the couple's speeding limousine slammed into a concrete pillar.
Police inquiries in both France and Britain have already concluded that pursuing media did not cause the crash, or fail to act properly at the scene.
"They were very, very close," Mark Butt, an eyewitness, told the documentary. "But they did not impede anybody."
In 2002, France's highest court dropped manslaughter charges against nine photographers, including Jacques Langevin, Christian Martinez and Fabrice Chassery.
Last February, a Paris appeals court fined those three photographers 1 euro each for invasion of privacy for taking pictures of Diana and Fayed on the night of the crash.
Fayed's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, filed the invasion of privacy complaint, which focused on three photos of the couple leaving the hotel and three taken after the accident.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in