Film Studied For Crash Clues Seven Paparazzi Detained, Questioned

Police seized about 20 rolls of film from the paparazzi who pursued Princess Diana and were developing it for clues to the crash that killed her and her companion, sources close to the investigation said Sunday.

Police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the film was confiscated from seven freelance photographers working mainly for the Stills, Gamma and Sipa agencies.

The photographers - six Frenchmen and a Macedonian - were placed in formal custody Sunday as authorities tried to determine whether they were in any way responsible for the tunnel crash that killed the Princess of Wales, her millionaire boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and their driver.

Police detained the seven at the crash scene early Sunday morning and questioned them throughout the day. Prosecutors can hold them for up to 48 hours without charges, and the police sources said they would spend Sunday night in custody. Police did not release their names.

Witnesses said the photographers, riding motorcycles, had swarmed the Mercedes sedan before it entered the tunnel along the Seine River just north of the Eiffel Tower. Within seconds, the car slammed into a concrete piling, spun and hit a tunnel wall, crumpling in a mass of twisted steel. Fayed and the chauffeur were killed instantly; Diana died at a hospital a few hours later.

“We want the entire truth,” Fayed’s family lawyer, Bernard Darteville, told French television Sunday evening, while calling for a separate judicial inquiry.

“It seems to me to be a case of involuntary homicide,” he said.

France Info radio said at least some of the photographers took pictures before help arrived - and one of the photographers was beaten at the scene by horrified witnesses. Police impounded two motorcycles and a scooter.

“This investigation will determine more particularly the role that these people may have played in the genesis of the accident,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a brief statement issued Sunday.

It said it was determined to discover “the exact unfolding of the facts” that led to the crash.

The Italian photographer who snapped a photo of Diana embracing Fayed that started a bidding war among tabloids around the world last month, said he was told photographers were no longer chasing the car when it crashed.

“A colleague who was on the scene told me … he and his colleagues had already broken away from the auto,” Mario Brenna told the Italian news agency ANSA.

Brenna didn’t name the photographer with whom he had spoken by phone.

Brenna’s photo in The Sunday Mirror in early August was the first time the mass public saw the princess romantically involved with anyone other than Charles.

Prosecutors have considerable leeway in considering what, if any, charges the photographers might face. Even if they are cleared of any direct role in causing the crash, France has a “Good Samaritan” law that makes it a crime to fail to help someone in danger.

The only survivor of the crash, a bodyguard who was seriously injured, could be authorities’ best hope as they struggle to reconstruct the tragedy.

The bodyguard, Trevor ReesJones, received injuries to the head, face and a lung. His condition was described as grave but not life-threatening, and he remained in intensive care at the same hospital where Diana died of her injuries.

Diana was known to go out without a bodyguard, and Rees-Jones was said to have been protecting Fayed, son of the billionaire Egyptian owner of London’s prestigious Harrods department store.

Police did not reveal the name of the chauffeur of the Mercedes sedan. French radio reported that he was an employee of the Ritz Hotel, where Diana and Fayed had dined Saturday evening.

The car was traveling at well over 60 mph, perhaps even twice that, a French source said on condition of anonymity. Diana and Fayed were not thought to have been wearing seat belts.

It was unclear whether speed alone caused the crash, which turned the car into a heap of twisted steel. Investigators spent several hours early Sunday measuring the skid marks, which measured 20-30 yards, left by the car before it slammed into a concrete post, spun and struck a tunnel wall.

The tunnel, about 300 yards long, brick-lined and well-illuminated, is one of many that dot the main highway that follows the Seine. The car hit the 13th piling into the tunnel, slammed against the opposite wall and came to rest about three-quarters of the way through.

In Germany, Mercedes-Benz spokesman Wolfgang Inhester said Sunday that the company had classified the accident as “catastrophic” because of the speed at impact.

“That means no matter what car the passengers would have been riding in, there was no chance of survival,” he said.

Experts at Mercedes said they had not been able to determine the model of the car from film and photographs of the wreckage.

All Mercedes S-class cars have been equipped with front and side airbags as standard equipment since 1996. They also have reinforcement in the chassis, including extra-sturdy roofs to prevent collapse in a normal accident. They cost anywhere from $55,865 for an S-280 to $117,320 for an S-600.