French paparazzi who chased the speeding Mercedes that carried Princess Diana to her death after crashing in a Paris tunnel are still fighting in court to clear their name, and debate over their conduct rages on, while three editors recently admitted their share of guilt over her death.
As Diana lay unconscious, dying in the wreckage on Aug. 31, 1997, a swarm of photographers snapped pictures of her and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, drawing outrage that she had been hounded until her death.
"The most hunted person of the modern age" is how her brother, Earl Charles Spencer, would describe Diana in his funeral eulogy.
PHOTO: AP
A month after the crash, nine photographers and a press motorcyclist were placed under formal investigation on charges of involuntary homicide and failure to assist persons in danger.
At the end of a two-year probe, they were cleared of any wrongdoing but the legal saga did not stop there.
A civil case filed by Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi's father and the owner of Harrods department store, is ongoing, accusing three photographers of invasion of privacy for taking pictures inside the vehicle.
A small victory came last year when the French appeals court ruled that Fabrice Chassery, Jacques Langevin and Christian Martinez had indeed violated privacy laws, quashing judgments handed down in 2003 and 2004.
The three photographers were fined a symbolic 1 euro (US$1.36) and an appeal is now before the Cour de Cassation.
"They were just doing their job," said lawyer Jean-Louis Pelletier, who represents Chassery in the case.
"They are paid to do this. They are good guys who know the rules and they never had any problems outside of this case," he said.
The editors of three leading British tabloids this month admitted their share of guilt over Diana's death, acknowledging that they had helped create an atmosphere in which the paparazzi were in a frenzy.
"We in the media were culpable in allowing the paparazzi to become ridiculously over the top," said Piers Morgan, who was the editor of the Daily Mirror in 1997, in a recent British documentary.
"If the paparazzi hadn't been following her the car wouldn't have been speeding and, you know, the accident may never have happened," said Phil Hall, then editor of the News of the World.
"A big Diana story could add 150,000 sales. So we were all responsible," he said.
But investigative reporter Jean-Michel Caradec'h, who wrote Lady Diana: The Criminal Investigation after he gained access to the complete police files on the accident, said the paparazzi have been wrongly faulted.
"The responsibility rests with the driver whose blood alcohol level was very high and who was speeding," Caradec'h said.
"Henri Paul was chosen by Dodi Fayed because he wanted to shake off the paparazzi," Caradec'h said. "But a professional driver would never have done that ... The only time they allow themselves such speed is with a police escort."
The official French inquiry blamed Paul, who also died in the crash, because he was driving drunk at high speed. Dodi's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was the only survivor of the accident.
The lawyer representing one of the photographers said Mohamed Al Fayed was behind a campaign to pin the blame on the paparazzi.
"Mr Al Fayed is a determined man, he has deep pockets," Pelletier said. "He is looking for a court conviction to be able to say that his son was the victim of a plot or something else."
A separate court battle is brewing over the publication in Caradec'h's book and in media reports of a photograph of Diana's last moments, where a paramedic is slipping an oxygen mask on the princess.
Chassery claims the photo, confiscated by police, is his and is seeking distribution rights.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS