Press photographer cleared of breaching Diana's privacy

A criminal court in Paris dropped charges yesterday against Britain's best-known press photographer, who scooped the world with pictures which proved that Diana, Princess of Wales, was in a relationship with Dodi Fayed.

Jason Fraser was accused of breaching the couple's privacy over the photographs of the pair on board a yacht off the Italian Riviera village of Portofino in 1997. The images of the Princess were taken shortly before the crash in the Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris that claimed her life and that of her new lover, the playboy son of Harrods' owner, Mohamed al-Fayed.

At an earlier court hearing, the state prosecutor, Alexandre Aubert, argued that the yacht constituted "a private place in which two people were surprised in their intimacy". However, the three judges at the Paris court found Mr Fraser, 39, not guilty of the charge. The reasons behind the ruling have not been revealed.

Last night it was not clear whether Mr Fayed, who owned the yacht and initiated the proceedings against Mr Fraser, would appeal.

The photographer is reported to have earned more than £1m from a series of pictures taken during this time after they were published around the world. A relieved Mr Fraser said: "Only Mr Fayed will know why he decided to spend such a great deal of time and money on throwing so much dirt at me."

The case was brought in France because foreign newspapers carrying the images were available in the country, and because the photographs were published in the French publications Paris Match and France Dimanche.

The Princess was killed while being driven at high speed after the pair were spotted leaving the Ritz hotel. In 2003 a court in Paris ruled that three photographers did not break privacy laws when they took pictures of the couple on the night of her death. The Harrods owner had sought symbolic damages from the court of one euro.

Mr Fraser has built a reputation as perhaps the most prolific member of the paparazzi, a term he rejects, even though he keeps an original film poster for Fellini's La Dolce Vita, the film that first coined the word, in his bedroom.

As well as royal scoops, Mr Fraser photographed the terrorist Carlos the Jackal while still on the run. He became a senior executive at Richard Desmond's Express newspaper, and more recently the bilingual photographer redesigned France Soir, one of Europe's leading newspapers. Mr Fraser continues to remain at the hub of a global picture-gathering operation, co-ordinating a network of photographers who feed the insatiable appetite of magazines for pictures of the rich and famous at play, from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. Speaking about another well-known picture taken around this time, of the Princess kissing Dodi Fayed, Fraser told the BBC in 2002: "I was given information that she was seeing Dodi and that they were in the Med. I did not know exactly where, but I was told the name of the boat. So I discussed it with [Italian photographer] Mario Brenner, who found it and got the photographs."

He added: "After that I took over and photographed her in Portofino, Sardinia and the South of France ... right up until Paris. I didn't go to Paris. But otherwise I was always there, wherever she went. I was the person who revealed her relationship. I don't know whether that feels good or not, but I will be remembered for it."

A life in pictures

* THE KISS Captured in the Mediterranean, pictures of the Princess and the playboy Dodi Fayed went around the world.

* THE TERRORIST Even though he was on the run from the world's authorities, Carlos the Jackal could not avoid photographer's lens.

* THE DJ Sara Cox won a reported £50,000 in damages from The People over naked honeymoon photographs.

* THE COUPLE The first pictures of Prince William and girlfriend Kate Middleton on the slopes together at Klosters

* THE MISSILE Protests at Greenham Common were one of the biggest stories of the 1980s. Fraser got the photographs of the first missile arriving at the base.