The British media feasted last week on the dramatic and unexpectedly visual start to the Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed inquest, but many have asked why taxpayers should meet the estimated 10m pound bill for a six-month legal circus. Don’t we already know that Diana was killed by a speeding drunk? I would argue, though, that the legally obligatory inquests are both valid and necessary. Lord Justice Scott Baker has stressed that the inquest will not apportion blame, but it will define history’s verdict. Perhaps most importantly, it should demonstrate to future generations that justice cannot be influenced by those most closely involved or those with most to lose.
Had Diana never met the Fayeds, she would not have been killed in that awful car crash 10 years ago, unless the jury chooses to believe Mohamed Al-Fayed’s version of events, which, evidence-free, is that the Duke of Edinburgh organized Diana and Dodi’s “assassination” at the hand of the late James Andanson, a French paparazzo. One problem with this theory is that Andanson was 160km from Paris when the crash happened.
The coroner told the jury that Fayed’s case was also that his own head of Ritz security, Henri Paul, was working as an MI6 “pawn”. He had been “used by MI6 to get Diana and Dodi to a spot where the assassination plan could be put into action, namely the Alma tunnel”.
One of Fayed’s three QCs at the inquest, Michael Mansfield, will illustrate to the coroner how this “assassination” was executed.
As the jury travels to Paris today with the coroner, members of Fayed’s gilded legal team will accompany them. They have to confront the fact that Diana was traveling from a Fayed hotel to a Fayed apartment in a Fayed car with a Fayed driver. The jury saw the last picture ever taken of the princess sitting next to Fayed’s son and behind a Fayed bodyguard.
Before Diana was buried, Fayed embarked on his multimillion-pound legal and PR effort to find someone, anyone, to take responsibility for the crash, other than his family or his current employees — some of whom were in situ when Diana died on the Fayed watch.
The Harrods press conference on Sept. 5, 1997, the eve of Diana’s funeral, provided the initial template for his campaign. In time it would target the French paparazzi; his own bodyguards (who both quit in 1998); his own head of Ritz security, Henri Paul; the 1997-99 French investigation that found that Diana died because Paul was drunk and speeding; the 2004-06 British investigation by Lord Stevens — Operation Paget — which looked into 175 Fayed “conspiracy claims” and found not one shred of evidence to support any of them; MI6 and the British Embassy in Paris, and even the CIA.
Mute CCTV footage from the Ritz focused the jury’s minds on the crucial hours before Dodi and Diana left the hotel. They provided some uncomfortable as well as some touching insights. Diana’s mock salute to Henri Paul as the Mercedes drew up outside the Ritz appeared to indicate that she thought he was in control. She was tragically mistaken.
Both bodyguards, Trevor Rees-Jones and Kez Wingfield, are seen in animated (inaudible) discussion with Dodi. Of the 20 issues laid out by the coroner for the inquest to consider, the central one is No 7: Whose decision was it that the Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed should leave from the rear entrance to the Ritz and that Henri Paul should drive the vehicle? The bodyguards’ objections to Henri Paul driving — he had never driven Fayed anywhere in 10 years — were rendered pointless by Mohamed himself.
They claim that, in a phone call with Dodi, the father approved the son’s plan to leave his hotel. In 1998 Fayed accused the two bodyguards of being responsible for the crash and, later, of being “turned” by MI6. Their appearance before the inquest — scheduled for next month — will be crucial. Both men have successfully defended their positions in court. Both categorically deny any link with MI6 and neither retains links with Fayed.
The CCTV pictures of Dodi’s return to the Ritz from a brief visit to the jeweler, Repossi, were also fascinating. On Wednesday, the coroner quoted Fayed’s mouthpiece, Michael Cole. He had initially been uncertain as to the provenance of the ring that Fayed today displays in Harrods as the couple’s “engagement ring”. On the eve of Diana’s funeral, Cole said: “Dodi gave (it) to the princess only hours before their deaths. What that ring meant we shall probably never know.”
Yet the ring has now, according to Fayed, become a central element in the royal family’s desire to wipe out the possibility of a Muslim stepfather for princes William and Harry.
The CCTV pictures have raised the question of whether Dodi himself actually bought a ring at all. They showed that he left Alberto Repossi’s shop close to the Ritz on Aug. 30 with only a catalogue.
No evidence was offered this week that Diana ever saw Repossi’s creation. Nothing has been produced to suggest that she had been proposed to by Dodi, or that she would have accepted such a proposal.
Lord Stevens obtained CCTV footage of both the Aug. 30 visits, which appear to challenge the jeweler’s 2003 claim that he personally placed the ring on Diana’s finger. Operation Paget found no evidence that Repossi ever met Diana. His appearance at the inquest will thus be most interesting.
— Martyn Gregory is the author of ‘Diana: The Last Days’ (Virgin Books, £6.99).
