Did Charles Kill Diana

[Siren 0]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,2763,1117604,00.html

 

If you think he authorised/acquiesced the whole thing, what was his motive. Evidence not required

[Thunderbird2 0]

Jealousy.

[Siren 0]

The accidental death of a Princess or murder most foul? Now the coroner must begin his quest for the truth

By Robert Verkaik and Kim Sengupta

07 January 2004

 

 

Even by the standards of the sensational claims and headlines which have appeared in the six years since the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, yesterday was quite extraordinary.

 

It began with the Daily Mirror, long the scourge of the Royal Family, and its decision to name for the first time the Prince of Wales as the person Diana apparently suspected of plotting to kill her in a car crash. When it first published the story three months ago, it had blacked out his name, fuelling fevered speculation.

 

Hours later, Michael Burgess, the Coroner of the Queen's Household, announced as he opened Diana's inquest that he was asking the Metropolitan Police to investigate the crash. He chose his words carefully, and the conspiracy theorists seized on them with gusto. For he acknowledged that the crash in August 1997 may have been something other than a "straightforward" accident.

 

Here, perhaps, was a gear change; recognition that the speculation needed to be addressed; either to seek evidence of support, or to nail the theories once and for all.

 

A theory that the Princess may have been deliberately killed, rather than the victim of her driver's drinking and a car chase to escape the paparazzi, was backed by a handful of conspiracists in the immediate aftermath of her demise. But a recent poll in The Sunday Express came out with an astonishing result: 85 per cent of respondents apparently believed that the crash was murder. On the internet, there are no fewer than 10,000 sites dedicated to the events in the Pont d'Alma tunnel that night.

 

The stakes in all this are high: higher even than in November, when Prince Charles opted for a high-risk strategy and publicly denied an alleged scandal involving him and his closest royal servant. As in that case, if there is any merit in the claim that Diana was a target of the Royal Family, the monarchy is in real trouble. It will be the job of Mr Burgess, assisted by the Metropolitan Police, to assess this. The belief that the Princess was murdered is most widespread in the Arab world, expounded not just in the bazaars but by those in authority. The killing, it is maintained, was carried out by a British establishment determined to stop her marrying a Muslim man, Dodi Fayed, and becoming the mother of Muslim children. A leading French police official told The Independent on Sunday last month that she was pregnant.

 

Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods and the father of her partner of several months, has been the driving force behind the campaign to prove that the Princess and his son were murdered. He has sounded touched at times; yesterday must have felt like vindication. Central to the inquiry will be the alcohol level in the blood of Henri Paul, the man who drove the couple on the fateful night. There are contradictory reports of how much he had drunk that evening.

 

Mr Fayed and the family of M. Paul, fiercely dispute the amount and suggest tests on him were falsified.

 

The tests showed that M. Paul had consumed large quantities of alcohol, as well as anti-depressant drugs. There were also the second test results and witness reports, and a bar bill from the Ritz, suggesting that he had been drinking heavily.

 

Questions have also emerged as to why M. Paul, an assistant head of hotel security, on a salary of £20,000 a year, had £122,000 in a number of bank accounts. Where did it come from? His friend Paul Garrec claimed that he had "contacts in intelligence". Why was M. Paul, off duty, called back to the hotel and assigned the job to drive the couple? Add this all together, and the conspiracy theorists' solution is simple: he was in the pay of MI6 (and was presumably sacrificed by his bosses).

 

Perhaps the most baffling mystery concerns the white Fiat Uno car, which was alleged to be at the crash scene. A number of witnesses said they saw it leave the scene at high speed. It is suggested the car clipped the couple's Mercedes before it crashed. Despite a massive hunt involving 40,000 identical cars in Paris, the vehicle and its driver were never found.

 

James Andanson, a French cameraman who admitted he drove a white Fiat Uno but denied being in the Paris tunnel that night, has since died in mysterious circumstances. In 2000, his remains were found in a burnt-out car amid speculation that he was murdered.

 

In another twist, a French news agency whose photographers were involved in the chase was the subject of a break-in. But the agency insists that there is no connection between the two events.

 

Perhaps the key witness will be Trevor Rees-Jones, the Princess's bodyguard and sole survivor in the Mercedes. He suffered severe injuries but survived because he was wearing a seat belt. He has always maintained that the crash was an accident.

 

Had Diana been wearing a seatbelt, of course, she too may have survived. Seatbelts can save lives, and Ken Wharfe, her former bodyguard, said that the first element of any security drill was to make sure she was buckled up. So why wasn't she? The issue of pregnancy may loom large. No concrete evidence has emerged either way. The senior police source in France who claimed that Diana was pregnant was also sure that her death was accidental. But a cover-up might explain some of the events seized on by conspiracy theorists.

 

The coroner must also address the question of why it took so long for Diana to be taken to hospital. It took 100 minutes to get her there, at least 10 times longer than it should have done at that time of night, but doctors believed it was better to treat her at the scene, and the ambulance went slowly for fear of exacerbating her injuries. Prince Charles's former press secretary Colleen Harris dismissed the Daily Mirror's story. It was, she said "absolute nonsense". Ten months before she died, Diana had written: "My husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury ... to make the path clear for him to marry''.

 

But why would he? They had separated in 1992, and were divorced more than a year before she died. Camilla Parker Bowles was unpopular with the public at that time but would he really have been party to murder? Or is the letter evidence of Diana's fragile mental state?

 

Accidental death, or murder most foul? Now it is up to Mr Burgess to decide.

[oo 1]

Do you think this will ever stop?

[kintaro 0]

Not in our lifetimes.

 

I've heard it called the British JFK. I don't know about that but the conspiracy stories and those looking to sell a book or otherwise profit from this will be around for quite a while I imagine.

[gammaman 0]

Well if a seatbelt could`ve saved Diana, I`m getting myself a helmet. You never know.

 

Blimey, Britain has never been so interesting, at least not since Henry VIII topped Anne Boleyn.

 

Even if it`s true, not a patch on History.

[frannyo 2]

This is interesting, you reckon? Sounds like a big yawnfest to me.

[Siren 0]

It is (i.e. a yawnfest). It was only the headline in Guardian and Independent last week. But of course you don't read frivolous newspapers like that.

[echineko 1]

Do you think Royal Family wsould do like this thing?

[Siren 0]

That's the question isn't it?

 

How far would you go to get rid of someone who is an embarrassment to you?