The trial has begun in France of a fundamentalist Catholic priest accused of causing the deaths of five people at a scouting summer camp.

The man, Father Jean-Yves Cottard, was in charge of the camp in July 1998 when four inexperienced teenagers and a rescuer drowned after their boat capsized.

Father Cottard, who belongs to a strict order linked to the far right National Front, is alleged to have run the camp along paramilitary lines. The BBC Paris correspondent says the incident has shed light on the secretive world of the order following the reaction of the bereaved parents -- who said that the arrest of Father Cottard was a greater loss than being deprived of their children.