Post by bingbong on Feb 19, 2008 8:18:38 GMT 12
Diana Inquest Hears Fayed’s Accusations
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: February 19, 2008
LONDON — Mohammed al-Fayed waited more than 10 years for the day in open court when he could lay out his theory of high-level conspiracy in the deaths of Princess Diana and his son Dodi, her lover when both died in a Paris car crash in August 1997.
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Times Topics: Princess Diana
When the moment came on Monday, in the fifth month of the long-delayed inquest into their deaths, Mr. Fayed, the 75-year-old owner of the Harrod’s department store, outdid himself with sensational new twists to his accusations that Britain’s royal family was behind the crash.
In a written statement he read before the packed benches of Room 73 in the Royal Courts of Justice, and under questioning, Mr. Fayed repeated his central claim: What caused the high-speed impact with a pillar in the Pont d’Alma tunnel beside the Seine was not, as lengthy official inquiries by the French and British authorities found, that their Mercedes was traveling at excessive speed and driven by a man who had been drinking heavily, but a conspiracy led by Prince Philip, the now 86-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth. And, he said, it was “executed” by the British and French secret intelligence services, with help from the C.I.A.
But this time, Mr. Fayed added a new co-conspirator, Prince Charles, Diana’s divorced husband and 59-year-old heir to the throne. Mr. Fayed said Charles had “participated” in the plot so that he could marry Camilla Parker-Bowles.
For the first time, Mr. Fayed said that Diana had told him she was pregnant in a telephone call an hour before the couple left the Ritz Hotel on the brief journey that ended with the crash.
He said the couple told him during the call that they planned to announce their engagement within days, once the princess had informed her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.
Aides to Mr. Fayed told British newspapers that they had urged him not to resort to the kind of provocative language he has commonly used regarding the royal family since the crash, lest he alienate the high court judge sitting as coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, or the 11-member jury. But Mr. Fayed — son of a Cairo school inspector who rose from the management of a furniture store in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to the ownership of Harrod’s, a 65,000-acre estate in Scotland and the Fulham football club in London — expressed himself as explosively as ever.
He called Philip a “Nazi” and a “racist.” He said Philip could not accept the idea of Diana, mother to a future British king, marrying Dodi, a Muslim. He referred to the bloodline of the prince, who was born in Greece into a family connected to several European royal families, including the German house of Battenberg, a name he Anglicized to Mountbatten before marrying the then Princess Elizabeth in 1947. “It’s time to send him back to Germany from where he comes,” Mr. Fayed said. “You want to know his original name — it’s Frankenstein.”
By arranging for Diana and his son to be killed, Mr. Fayed said, Philip and Charles had saved the royal family from having the princess marry a Muslim and bear his child. “They cleared the decks,” he said. “They murdered her.”
The inquest is in many ways a forum crafted by Mr. Fayed as a place to test his conspiracy theories with the fullest possible publicity. He spent millions of dollars in legal battles to ensure the inquest would be held under a British law that requires a coroner to rule on the cause of death of any British subject who is repatriated after dying abroad. He made sure the inquest would be held in public and before a jury, conditions vigorously opposed by the royal family and many in Britain’s legal establishment, instead of in closed session before a judge sitting alone.
With a legal team led by Michael Mansfield, a high-profile barrister who made his reputation in some of Britain’s most sensational libel cases, Mr. Fayed has seen to it, by calling dozens of witnesses, that few corners of Diana’s life have been left unexplored.
— The inquest has heard from Buckingham palace aides, the princess’s closest friends, members of her personal staff and bodyguards, and one of her sisters, along with policemen, ambulance crewmen, doctors and others who tried to save her on the night of the crash. Little has been spared, not even details of relationships the princess had with several other men before the brief, final affair with the younger Mr. Fayed.Mr. Fayed began his testimony, which is scheduled to continue on Tuesday, by saying he would make “no allegations,” but he quickly repeated charges he has made over the years. He said the princess had told him of her fears that she would be killed. “She told me that she knew Prince Philip and Prince Charles were trying to get rid of her,” he said.
He said the princess had told him that she had kept a wooden box with material that supported her fears, and that if anything happened to her he should see to it that the contents were made public. When he raised the matter with the princess’s sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, two days after the crash, he said, she had told him “that she thought the crash was suspicious, that she would find the box and keep its contents safe.” He added: “ She has not done so. I am certain, also, that she was part of the cover-up.”
In their questioning of Mr. Fayed, the lead counsel for the inquest, Ian Burnett, and the corner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, implied that credulity was strained by the number of people that Mr. Fayed claimed were involved in the conspiracy, ranging from former Prime Minister Tony Blair “and his senior henchmen” to security and medical personnel.
Challenged to provide proof to support his claims, Mr. Fayed said that he had faced an uphill struggle against the powerful forces arrayed against him. “You want me to get the proof but I am facing a steel wall from the security services,” he said. But Lord Justice Scott Baker, who is expected to conclude the inquest in the spring, gave a hint of his scepticism. “A lot of people were involved in the plot,” he said.
