The family of Britain’s Princess Diana said on Thursday they were ”shocked and sickened” by the United States broadcast of paparazzi images of her dying in a Paris car crash.
The fuzzy pictures, aired on Wednesday by CBS, came from a French investigation into the August 1997 crash in Paris that took the life of Diana, her lover Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul.
”The earl [Lord Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother] and his family are shocked and sickened by CBS’s actions,” said a one-line statement from the family’s Althorp estate in central England, where Diana is buried.
Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, who owns London’s Harrods department store and the Paris Ritz hotel, also condemned the broadcast, saying: ”CBS obviously don’t care about the appalling effect of showing images of murder victims.”
”They simply want to cash in on the tragedy. It is disgraceful and insensitive of them to do this,” said Al Fayed, who contends that the crash was the result of foul play.
”It is devastating for me and for Prince William and Prince Harry,” Al Fayed added, referring to Diana’s two sons by Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, who she divorced a year before her death.
There was no comment from Clarence House, the official residence of the three princes, or from Buckingham Palace, which speaks for Queen Elizabeth II.
The photocopied, indistinct, black-and-white images of Diana seen by CBS were taken from a copy of a confidential French investigation into the accident, which the network said it had managed to obtain.
One fuzzy image showed Diana’s apparently blood-stained head as she was being treated in the wreckage of the black Mercedes-Benz by French doctor Frederick Maillez within minutes of the crash in a Paris underpass.
In a statement, CBS defended its Diana special on its primetime 48 Hours current affairs programme, maintaining that none of the pictures were ”remotely graphic”.
Much of the programme was largely a rehash of various conspiracy theories surrounding Diana’s death on August 31 1997, as she was travelling with Fayed from the Ritz to his apartment.
It disclosed no fresh evidence to contradict the findings of a French investigation that the crash was the result of high-speed driving and high levels of alcohol and prescription drugs found in Paul’s blood.
Copies of the 6 000-page French investigation are now in the hands of Britain’s royal coroner, Michael Burgess, who has asked London’s Metropolitan Police to verify if any of the conspiracy theories have merit.
Burgess opened an inquiry into the deaths of Diana and Fayed last January.
Diana’s former protection officer Ken Wharfe, speaking on Britain’s GMTV morning television, said on Thursday that the decision to air the photographs was ”regrettable”.
”I was invited along with others [to appear on the CBS programme] in the belief this was a documentary to tell the positive side of Diana, rather than the negative that we have now being seen on American television.
”I do not think it is good journalism and it is certainly not going to demonstrate any more than we know already.” — Sapa-AFP