LONDON: The father of Princess Diana’s last boyfriend urged Britain on Tuesday to try and force French paparazzi to give evidence at her death inquest, after a court barred unchallenged written testimony.
Mohamed Al-Fayed, father of Dodi Fayed, wants Justice Secretary Jack Straw to persuade the French government to put pressure on the paparazzi present after Diana’s fatal 1997 car crash, his spokesman Michael Cole said.
“You cannot have a situation where 12 paparazzi make self-serving statements which are maybe incorrect without any challenge at all, Cole said.
“This decision does increase pressure on Mr Straw to use his best efforts with his opposite number in Paris so that French witnesses will come and give evidence, he added.
Cole’s comments came after two High Court judges ruled that written testimony from the paparazzi cannot be used at the inquest into her death in a Paris road tunnel without cross-examination.
The French photographers have declined to testify in person at the inquest, and France has rejected a previous request by British authorities to force them to give evidence.
The coroner in the case, Lord Justice Scott Baker, had said the paparazzis’ written evidence could be allowed.
But lawyers for the family of Diana’s driver Henri Paul argued that it should not be used if there was no chance to cross-examine the photographers afterwards.
The full consequences of the ruling were not immediately clear, but in theory it could leave the inquest without testimony from paparazzi who are seen as potentially key figures in the tragedy.
Complicating matters further, the inquest coroner was given leave to appeal against the ruling.
Diana, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul were all killed in the crash as they tried to flee photographers pursuing them from the Ritz hotel in central Paris in the early hours of August 31, 1997.
A French and separate British investigation both concluded that the crash was caused by Paul being over the legal alcohol limit and driving too fast.
Mohamed A-Fayed, the millionaire owner of Harrods department store, maintains they were killed in a British establishment plot as they did not want to see the mother to the heir to the throne marry a Muslim.
France’s high court of appeal on Tuesday confirmed a conviction for breach of privacy against one of the photographers who had chased Diana’s car.
Fabrice Chassery went to the Cour de Cassation after a lower court ordered him and two other paparazzi to pay a symbolic euro in damages to Mohamed Al-Fayed.
But the court upheld the view that the interior of a car is legally a private space, and therefore that some of the shots taken that night broke France’s strict privacy laws.
Chassery’s lawyer Jean-Louis Pelletier described the ruling as “totally aberrant but expressed the hope that it marked the end of the judicial process brought by Al-Fayed against the photographers.
