William and Kate win photos injunction
A French court grants an injunction preventing further publication of topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge.
France’s Closer magazine is also banned from distributing the photographs and would be fined £8,000 every time it breached this ruling. It was told it had to hand over the images.
The ruling only applies to France; it does not cover Italy and Ireland, where the pictures have also been published.
At the same time, a criminal investigation has been launched in France into whether the publication of the pictures breached the privacy of Prince William and his wife Kate under French law.
This will allow the prosecutor to determine whether or not a full inquiry is required into the matter. The initial investigation will be carried out by BRDP, a branch of the French police responsible for dealing with attacks on individuals.
Editor suspended
Last night, the editor of the Irish Daily Star was suspended over his decision to publish the pictures.
Michael O’Kane was suspended by the publishers of the newspaper, Independent Star, while an internal investigation into his decision to publish the photographs takes place.
The Irish Daily Star reprinted the photographs over the weekend after they had appeared in Closer, prompting St James’ Palace to say: “There can be no motivation for this action other than greed.”
The newspaper, co-owned by media baron Richard Desmond’s Northern and Shell group and the Irish-based Independent News and Media, has been under threat of closure since publishing the pictures.
Independent Star released a statement saying: “Independent Star Limited has suspended editor Michael O’Kane with immediate effect, pending an investigation into the circumstances that led to the Irish Daily Star re-publishing pages from the French magazine ‘Closer’, which contained images of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
“Independent Star Limited has no further comment pending conclusion of the joint investigation by the newspaper’s shareholders.”
In the French courts
William and Kate launched their legal battle against publication of the pictures in the French courts yesterday. Their lawyer, Aurelien Hamelle, demanded a series on injunctions preventing further publication of the images, including heavy fines for republishing the images, a ban on electronic distribution of the images, and for the originals to be handed over.
Mr Hamelle accused Closer, which is run by a different company to the British title of the same name, of “violating the bodily privacy” of the couple. He dismissed the magazine’s arguments that the photographs were “normal” and “of a young couple on holiday” as “lacking in morality.”
Closer has argued that the pictures were taken from a public place, on a road 700-metres from the chateau were the duke and duchess were staying.
William and Kate are currently on a Jubilee tour of Singapore, Malaysia, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu, and were yesterday on the Solomon Islands where they were entertained, perhaps ironically, by topless dancers. Today the tour will finish on the island of Tuvalu.