Lensman 'offered pictures from Diana crash'
30.10.2007, 07:51
A photographer called a British tabloid newspaper from the scene of Princess Diana's fatal car crash and struck a deal to sell it graphic pictures of the wreck, her inquest in London heard on Tuesday.
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Romuald Rat, the first paparazzo on the scene, called the Sun to offer shots - including the princess with blood on her face and wearing an oxygen mask - for 300 000 pounds, the High Court was told.
The claim emerged as motorcycle rider Stephane Darmon gave more evidence about the run-up to the high-speed crash which killed Diana, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and chauffeur Henri Paul in Paris on August 30, 1997.
Rat himself denied having tried to sell any pictures of the dying princess.
Darmon, speaking via videolink from Paris, said that Rat had tried to "do something positive" for the princess, Fayed and Paul by moving other people away from the scene.
But Richard Keen, lawyer for Paul's family, suggested that "what Mr Rat was protecting was not the victims of this crash but the 300 000-pound exclusive that he had just telephoned into the Sun from the tunnel."
Darmon said he did not know how to respond to that claim.
Jurors also heard part of an interview given by Kenneth Lennox of the Sun to Channel Four television in which he told how Rat had sent over photographs to the paper which had "jumped off the screen" at him.
"He said it was a serious crash. Dodi looked to be very badly injured. Diana looked to be very lightly injured, did not look too severely hurt at all. And he would get the photographs over to my electronic picture desk right now.
"I didn't waste time. I had to see these pictures, but in principle I said yes to buying them."
The Sun did not publish any photographs from the crash scene in the wake of the princess's death.
But Rat, who says he has not been summoned to give evidence at the inquest or contacted by the coroner, denied the claims in an interview with reporters.
"I was taken into custody straight away. I never tried to sell any pictures of Diana," he said, adding that he could not sell direct to a paper because he worked for the Gamma picture agency.
"One of my photos appeared in the press around the world recently. It was distributed through the inquest when some pictures came out as evidence and I did not try to make money from it."
On Monday, Darmon suggested that Paul, who was over the legal drink-drive alcohol limit at the time of the crash, was behaving like an alcoholic as he talked to photographers just before he set out on the fatal journey.
Keen said it was "very convenient" for him to suggest that Paul was responsible for the crash, not him.
The court also heard a suggestion from Ian Croxford, lawyer for the Ritz Hotel in Paris where Paul worked, that Darmon had been driving aggressively while pursuing the princess's car earlier on the day she died.
Darmon denied driving dangerously.
The inquest got under way at the beginning of October and is expected to run well into next year.