French prosecutor seeks hefty fines over topless shots of Prince William's wife Kate

Paris: The prosecution in the case of six people on trial in France over the publication of topless photographs of Prince William's wife Kate called on Tuesday for "very significant fines".

A lawyer for the royal couple separately called for "very large damages" over the long-lens shots taken as they holidayed in the south of France and published in Closer magazine and regional newspaper La Provence in 2012.

The royal couple were snapped on a break in southern France at a chateau owned by Viscount David Linley, the son of Princess Margaret, the late sister of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

One of the most intimate shots, which were not published in Britain where they caused a storm, shows the Duchess of Cambridge topless and having suncream rubbed into her buttocks by husband William.

Laurence Pieau, Closer's editor in France, Ernesto Mauri, chief executive of the Mondadori group which owns the magazine, and Cyril Moreau and Dominique Jacovides, two Paris-based agency photographers suspected taking the pictures, must answer charges of invasion of privacy and complicity at the trial at Nanterre outside Paris.