Uproar over de Viguerie’s photos

One of France's best known women photographers, Veronique de Viguerie (pictured), is at the centre of a storm after Paris Match magazine published photographs taken by her of Taliban guerillas who claimed to be part of the group that killed 10 French paratroopers last month. In one photograph, a Taliban fighter is dressed in the combat uniform, helmet, goggles and bullet-proof vest of one of the dead French soldiers.

Politicians across the spectrum have attacked the magazine for publishing the photographs, taken a few miles from the scene of the ambush in which the Frenchmen died. The French defence minister, Herve Morin, accused the magazine of taking part in a Taliban 'propaganda' exercise. "Should we really be doing promotion for people who understand the importance of communication in the modern world?" he asked.

Further photographs in the magazine's 10-page spread showed a man calling himself Farouki, and claiming to be the leader of the Taliban force, surrounded by his team, all of them holding assault rifles and other trophies taken from the bodies of the French soldiers. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Green politician who was famously a leader of the French student revolt in the 1960s, said: "There has always been an abject side to the voyeurism of Paris Match."

To make matters worse for Paris Match, the newspaper Le Monde reported yesterday that the Taliban had cut the throats of four of the French soldiers as they lay wounded on the ground. The French military had insisted that the dead men died instantly.

The meeting with the Taliban was arranged by the veteran Paris Match war correspondent Eric de Lavaren, who accompanied Veronique de Viguerie on the assignment. He rejected claims that the magazine had allowed itself to be manipulated by the Taliban, though he admitted: "It is true that the Taliban have become masters in the art of communication."