Fayeds, Driver’s Family Deflect Accusations

PARIS —  Mohammed Fayed’s lawyer conceded Thursday that Princess Diana’s driver should not have taken the wheel if he was drunk, but he insisted that the photographers who followed her car were primarily to blame for the Aug. 31 crash that killed her, the driver and Fayed’s son Dodi.

Attorney Bernard Dartevelle said Fayed’s Hotel Ritz, which employed driver Henri Paul, bears no responsibility for the crash.

Results of a third blood-alcohol test on Paul confirmed the previous two, indicating that he had more than three times the legal level of alcohol in his system at the time of the crash. The third test also determined that he had taken Prozac and another prescription drug.

“I can’t deny there is responsibility of Henri Paul, who shouldn’t have taken the wheel with such a level of alcohol,” Dartevelle said. But “I would say it’s almost a secondary responsibility. There is an initial responsibility of the paparazzi who led the aggressive chase of the Mercedes.”

The photographers, he said, were the “fundamental and determining” factor in the accident.

Nine photographers and a motorcycle courier are under formal investigation for manslaughter and failure to assist the accident victims. Authorities are seeking more photographers who were at the scene.

The photographers’ lawyers argue that any manslaughter suspicions have evaporated because Paul had drunk the equivalent of a bottle and a half of wine and had been taking the antidepressant Prozac and another drug to calm aggressiveness and agitation.

Meanwhile, Paul’s parents said Thursday that he was being wrongly blamed for the accident and denied that he was alcoholic or depressive.

“My son was not an alcoholic. He’s now paying for the personalities that he was driving,” Paul’s mother, Giselle, told the French newspaper Le Figaro. “Can one imagine the princess of Wales and Dodi al Fayed would have agreed to get into a car driven by a drunk? . . . Henri had the full confidence of his employer [the Hotel Ritz].”

Barbara Broccoli, daughter of James Bond filmmaker Cubby Broccoli and a close friend of Dodi Fayed, expressed a similar view in an interview with The Times of London.

“The footage of Dodi and the princess at the Ritz shows Dodi face to face with Henri Paul,” Broccoli said. “Had Dodi smelled even the faintest whiff of alcohol on his breath, it would have been inconceivable for him to get into that car. Dodi was obsessive about safety--he hated fast cars.”

Judicial sources said a security video taken at the Ritz the evening before the early morning crash--excerpts of which have been released to the media showing Paul appearing steady--had been passed in its entirety to investigators.

Paul’s mother said he was “not depressive and was getting along perfectly.”

“I don’t need to defend him. I wish any mother could have a son like him,” she said, adding that she had not even received a death certificate. “Is this the way the people should be treated?”

Claude Garrec, who played tennis with Paul on Saturday morning, said they went for a drink after the game at midday in a Paris bar.

“He drank only a cola light,” Garrec said. Paul “didn’t have the profile of an alcoholic or a depressive. He always walked straight. I can’t deny that he drank, but not so much that it was a problem.”

Magistrates Herve Stephan and Marie-Christine Devidal, the two French investigators in charge of the crash probe, have turned their attention to the wrecked Mercedes, inspecting the vehicle at a northern Paris police impound lot.

Police found several items in the car, including two portable telephones, a pearl bracelet, a ring with white stones, a watch, a woman’s pair of black shoes and a woman’s belt, a judicial source said on condition of anonymity.

In England, Princes William and Harry have returned to school, but British newspapers kept their pledge not to intrude on Diana’s sons and published no pictures of them Thursday.

St. James’s Palace, home of their father, Prince Charles, reported that Charles had taken William, 15, back to Eton and 12-year-old Harry to Ludgrove School on Wednesday.

Charles had appealed to the media for “time and space” for the young princes to come to terms with the loss of their mother.

In Boston, photographer Stan Grossfeld of the Boston Globe donated his $1,650 prize from a French photo contest to land mine prevention programs in memory of Diana, a UNICEF official said Thursday.

The UNICEF spokesman said the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner’s donation may help counter the negative public image of photographers since Diana’s death.