The three 'paparazzi' who photographed Diana on the day of her death were acquitted
Six years after the tragic death of Diana of Wales and her partner, Dodi Al Fayed, the Paris Correctional Court has today acquitted of the charge of violation of privacy the three paparazzi who pursued the vehicle in which the couple was traveling and they photographed the agony of both after the accident.
The three photographers, Christian MartÃnez, Jacques Langevin and Fabrice Chassery, were accused by the Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi's father, of violating the privacy and private life of his son and Princess Diana, by photographing the couple before and after the fatal accident.
Although the photos were never published, the millionaire's lawyers, constituted as a private prosecution, had requested a sentence of a symbolic euro to the paparazzi and the publication of the sentence to prevent the images from coming to light. The Public Ministry, for its part, accused the photographers of portraying "the helplessness of people who were dying" and requested that the Court establish prison sentences exempt from compliance to make it clear that freedom of expression is not an "unlimited right ".
The defense, for its part, assured that a conviction would endanger the freedom of information, for which it requested the acquittal of the photographers. This sentence closes the only trial in France on the death of the Princess and her friend, in a car accident in August 1997 in the Alma tunnel in Paris, next to the Seine River.
The three photographers were part of a group of ten paparazzi who chased the popular couple through the streets of Paris on the night of the drama. Initially accused of having disturbed the driver, the photographers were exonerated by the investigators, who concluded that the cause of the accident was in the excess of alcohol consumed by the driver Henry Paul, coupled with the high speed at which he was circulating.
