Tuesday 16 December 2003

Diana's death likened to MI6 plot

Where exactly is the inquest that Tony mentioned anyway? Hmmm, something smells here: 9/11 - no investigation; Diana Crash - no inquest. How is it that David Kelly merits an instant inquest at the hands of Lord Hutton but Diana doesn't? Where there's smoke there's fire and this has "dodgy" written all over it.

More than six years after the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al-Fayed, the questions surrounding the Paris car crash in which they were killed continue to grip the public imagination.

The Court of Session in Edinburgh became the centre of international attention yesterday as Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods, pursued his search for the truth about how, or why, his son and Diana died.

"I have been fighting for six years, but I can see the light and justice can be done. What I am doing is for the nation and for the ordinary people ... Eighty-five per cent believe Diana was murdered with my son."

The court heard Mr Fayed’s counsel contend that he had "substantial grounds" for fearing that the British security services were implicated. The crash, it was claimed, had "striking similarities" to an earlier MI6 plot to remove Slobodan Milosevic, then president of Serbia.

Colin Boyd, QC, the Lord Advocate, has refused an inquiry into the crash, but Mr Fayed maintains that as a resident of Scotland, at Balnagown Castle, Kildary, Easter Ross, he is entitled to secure his rights under the tenets of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Mr Fayed argues there should be an effective, official inquiry when someone appears to have been killed as a result of the use of force and is asking Lord Drummond Young to set aside the Lord Advocate’s decision as incompatible with the ECHR.

Richard Keen, QC, for Mr Fayed, said that the official line from the French police after the crash in a tunnel in Paris in the early hours of 31 August, 1997, was that it had been an accident caused by Henri Paul, assistant head of security at the Ritz hotel and the driver of the Mercedes the couple died in. The French police said Mr Paul was drunk and on anti-depressants at the time of the crash. Mr Paul also died in the incident.

"He [Mr Paul] had been in the Ritz Hotel for two hours before he left and is recalled by all those who spoke with him as being entirely sober," said Mr Keen. He said British and American security services were monitoring Diana and Dodi in the month leading up to their deaths and that Henri Paul may have been an MI6 informant.

And on the night of the crash Mr Paul had taken a "highly unusual route" from the Ritz to Dodi’s apartment.

The QC said pieces of a broken tail-light, from a white Fiat Uno, had been found at the scene of the crash, and there were marks on the bumper of the Mercedes.

Full story...