Topless Kate photos charges,
A woman photographer has been placed under formal criminal
investigation in connection with pictures taken of the Duchess of
Cambridge as she sunbathed in France, it emerged tonight.
Legal
sources in Paris said she is Valerie Suau, who admits taking images of
Kate in the south of the country in September. She describes her
pictures, published in France's La Provence regional newspaper, as 'all
decent'.
But she is now facing a criminal trial along
with a man believed to be Ernesto Mauri, the publisher of French Closer
magazine, which first ran the pictures. Both are being prosecuted under
strict privacy legislation.
Kate, 31, and 30-year-old
Prince William took legal action against Closer in September, as their
lawyer, Aurelien Hamelle, described the Duchess as a 'a young woman, not
an object’.
He said the royal couple had suffered a
'grotesque breach of privacy' and felt 'violated' during a 'highly
intimate moment during a scene of married life'.
Ms
Suau, whose name is pronounced 'sewer', has kept a low profile ever
since the case, but police are believed to have arrested her earlier
this month.
She took the photos on September 5 as the couple relaxed at Viscount Linley's retreat, Chateau d'Autet, in Provence.
Referring
to Princess Diana's death in 1997, Mr Hamelle said it was 'just six
days after the 15th anniversary of the cynical and morbid hunt which led
to the death of William's mother'.
Mr Hamelle told the
court William and Kate could not have known they were being spied on
and a photographer would have needed a long lens, even if he or she was
on a public road.
Mr Hamelle said that if the original
digital images were not handed in, the Mondadori group - which publishes
Closer - should be fined £8,000 a day for non-compliance.
The
Duke and Duchess also launched criminal proceedings against the then
unnamed photographer under France's strict privacy laws.
The
French media are protected from having to name their sources -
including photographers - but the royal couple are said to have made it a
personal crusade to discover who took the images.
Ms
Suau has denied being responsible for taking any indecent images. She
says she took pictures of Kate in her swimsuit but not topless.
Yet, despite her claims, no other photographer has been identified, nor even been placed in the area at the time.
Delphine
Pando, representing the magazine, told a court case in the Paris suburb
of Nanterre last year that topless photographs were no longer
considered shocking.
She denied that the chateau was
inaccessible to public view and claimed the magazine did not hold the
rights to the pictures, so it could not be proved that it intended to
republish them.
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