Royal couple want criminal charges

KATE Middleton and Prince William have asked French authorities to launch a criminal inquiry into the topless pictures published in a magazine.

They want the peeping tom photographer and the magazine charged with invading their privacy in taking pictures from a public road as they sunbathed on holiday at Viscount Linley's Chateau d'Autet in Vaucluse.

It is the second salvo in the royal couple's attack on Closer magazine following a civil complaint that they lodged at the end of last week.

A St James's Palace spokesman said that that complaint would be heard at Nanterre late this afternoon. It will bid to halt the magazine from selling further copies of the photographs worldwide and displaying them on the internet. They have already appeared in an Italian magazine and an Irish newspaper.

Another action will follow for damages.

However, while French law is strong on protecting people's privacy - with a constitutional right to privacy - the penalties rarely match the gains that magazines and newspapers can make.

Prince William - who is second on line to the UK throne - and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, are on a royal tour in the Far East. It has been reported that when a child in Kuala Lumpur asked him what superpower he wanted, he said "to be invisible".

* US actress Halle Berry says in an exclusive interview in this month's Connexion that she wants to move to Paris to avoid the intrusive paparazzi in Los Angeles. She said that in France she and her daughter would not be "hunted and exploited" and she would have "more pirvacy and laws to protect my daughter".
Photo: Pat Pilon