The costly inquiry into the fatal car crash of Diana, Princess of Wales, is angering some French judges, lawyers and police who complain of a tight justice budget and lack of funds for the courts. Her companion, Dodi Fayed, and the car's driver, Henri Paul, also died in the crash.
Signs of discontent began to emerge after police in Paris yesterday announced they would question the owners of 40,000 Fiat Unos in a massive search for the mystery car that may have swerved in front of Princess Diana's Mercedes, causing it to crash into a Paris tunnel pillar at high speed.
"It seems paradoxical that such a staggering amount of research should be done. I have never seen so many means put in place for a car accident. It's absurd," Mr Jean-Claude Bouvier, secretarygeneral of the left-leaning Magistrates' Union (SM), said in an interview.
"It's indecent compared to the lack of financing and the difficulty judges have in carrying out other investigations," he said. "If such vast means are deployed for one person, they should be for everyone. I don't care if it is for royalty or not."
Officials say that more than 20 members of the homicide squad have been working on the probe since the August 31st crash, and hundreds of policemen in local stations will be carrying out checks on the car owners.
Investigators have been working on the hypothesis that traces of white paint on the Mercedes limousine could have come from hitting another car, possibly a Fiat Uno, as it entered the Pont de l'Alma tunnel and then swung out of control as a result.
Ironically, the complaints coincided with a strike by French lawyers over the tight justice budget, which makes up 1.5 per cent of the national budget.
According to two French dailies, the eight-week-old probe into the crash has so far cost two million francs (£233,000).
"It's going to cost millions of francs and will be the most expensive probe into a traffic accident in history," said one investigator on the case.
Justice sources said that one of the two magistrates conducting the investigation, Judge Herve Stephan, has had to put aside some 100 pending cases to work on the probe into the accident.
Mr William Bourdon, a lawyer for one of the nine photographers charged with manslaughter over the deaths, was in favour of seeing every clue explored to prove the innocence of his client, Nicolas Arsov, a photographer for Sipa picture agency.
But he said the hysteria that followed the accident left French authorities no choice but to exhaust all means at their disposal.