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At Inquest in Princess Di's Death, Charge of Racism Hurled at Royal

Posted on: Tuesday, 19 February 2008, 06:00 CST

By Jeffrey Stinson

LONDON -- The chief accuser who claims that Princess Diana died in a murder plot orchestrated by the British royal family got his day in a courtroom Monday, calling Prince Philip a racist responsible for a huge coverup.

Mohamed al Fayed, whose son Dodi died with Diana in a Paris car crash more than 10 years ago, told a coroner's inquest that Philip directed an intricate plot to "slaughter" the couple.

Fayed, owner of Harrods luxury department store in London, said the British secret service carried out the plot with the help of a now-dead photographer and the couple's driver, Henri Paul, who also died in the crash.

Fayed, 75, called Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, a "racist" and a "Nazi." A tearful Fayed told the inquest that the prince was not going to let the mother of Britain's future king marry Dodi because his son was a Muslim and had dark skin and curly hair.

The allegations came on the 70th day of testimony in front of a jury of six women and five men. The packed courtroom had an overflow crowd watching on TV monitors in an annex at the Royal Courts of Justice. An inquest to determine the cause of death is required by law when someone dies violently or of unknown causes.

Pregnancy, conspiracy theory

The inquest follows two police investigations -- one French, the other British. They both concluded that the couple died in a drunken-driving accident in a Paris tunnel on Aug. 31, 1997. The three-year British probe found that Paul's alcohol content was above the legal limit and that he was driving too fast.

Fayed has been the chief instigator of the extensive British investigation and exhaustive inquest that began Oct. 2. The investigation and inquest have cost taxpayers about $12 million so far. The presiding coroner, Scott Baker, hopes the jury gets the case before Easter.

Fayed told the panel he had waited 10 years and spent millions to get this far. He had faith that the "ordinary" people on the jury would find the truth, which he adamantly maintained was murder traced back to Buckingham Palace.

The jury, however, has seen little evidence to back up his claims. Fayed offered no evidence of a plot beyond saying Diana told him in the summer of 1997 that Prince Philip wanted to get rid of her.

Fayed said the couple told him during a phone call an hour before they died that Diana was pregnant and they would announce their engagement in two days.

Fayed said Philip knew of the romance because the British secret service, MI6, was bugging the couple, in coordination with the CIA and U.S. National Security Agency.

"They know she is pregnant," Fayed testified. "They know she is going to be engaged and get married. Prince Philip will not allow it."

Baker has said that no pregnancy test was conducted on the princess' body and she had not given any indication to her friends she was pregnant.

Fayed said Prince Philip came from a family whose last name ends with "Frankenstein" and should be sent "back to Germany," alluding to the royal family's German ancestors. He said Diana's former husband, Prince Charles, wanted Diana out of the way so he could marry Camilla Parker Bowles, whom Fayed called "his crocodile wife."

Fayed insisted that proof was in MI6 files. "You ask me for proof," he said. "How can I give the proof? Where is the (MI6) file?

"I'm just trying to find the murderer who killed my son," he continued. "Thank God I have this forum. ... I hope the court and the jury have heard and have seen all the proof, all the coverup."

Skepticism and spectacle

Some observers aren't buying Fayed's claims. John Loughrey, 52, gave up his job as a chef to attend the inquest every day. He is convinced the royal family had nothing to do with the deaths. "What would they want to kill the princess for? That's madness."

Loughrey, who had "Diana" written on his forehead and "Dodi" on his cheeks, was first in line at 7 a.m. every day for the 20 public seats. He said he was inspired to attend the proceedings while outside Diana's old residence at Kensington Palace last year. "I felt a brush on my shoulder," Loughrey said. "Nobody was there."

For others, the inquest is a tawdry spectacle that has run too long. Max Hastings, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper, wrote last month: "In a sensible universe, Fayed's allegations would long ago have been laughed into oblivion."

Recent testimony addressed various aspects of Fayed's allegations:

*Paul, the driver, had made payments of $16,000 into his accounts each of the three months before the crash. His parents said the money was from generous tips, not payments by British secret service to be part of a plot.

*Retired French police investigator Jean Claude Mules testified that a paparazzi photographer who later committed suicide was not the driver of a mystery white Fiat seen at the time of the crash. The photographer, James Adanson, was 177 miles away from Paris, he said.

*Michael Jay, Britain's former ambassador in Paris, denied he ordered Diana's body to be embalmed to cover up a pregnancy, as Fayed claimed.

*Robert Fellowes, who had been Queen Elizabeth's secretary and Diana's brother-in-law, testified he was in Norfolk, in eastern England, at the time of the crash.

*John Macnamara, a retired Scotland Yard detective and Fayed's former security chief, said he had no evidence of a plot, aside from what Fayed had told him.

Fayed vowed to never give up. "I will expose those gangsters -- not only for me, but for the ordinary people of this country," he said. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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