Read the full transcripts of the Diana inquest

Six women and five men found themselves in a jury box yesterday at the start of an inquest that will take a six-month bite out of their lives. Before them in a crowded courtroom sat the principal players in a drama that has seized most of the world for a decade.

It was for Lord Justice Scott Baker, coroner at the inquests of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed, to steady their nerves and to inject a sense of purpose that must not be swayed by the millions of words and pictures published over the past ten years, nor by the knowledge that the eyes of the world will be upon them.

Now, at last, the final act is under way and 11 ordinary souls drawn at random from the West London electoral register will have the final say on whether the deaths were the result of a conspiracy to murder or a simple, sad case of drink-driving.

A Perrier with the Princess

Peter Stothard, former Editor of The Times, recalls a discussion with Diana about memos, mistresses and the media

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BACKGROUND

• The explosion of vileness that followed her death

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The hearing will touch the highest in the land, and there is an attempt to summon the very highest to give evidence in one of her own courts.

There was drama from the start, with the court being shown a photograph of the Princess in a leopard-print swimsuit and pictures of the crash scene, and with Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father and the chairman of Harrods, provocatively complaining that the coroner was already showing bias.

It had happened a long time ago, Lord Justice Scott Baker, the third coroner to take on the case, told his new jury in a tone of sympathetic apology; memories had faded or distorted and witnesses vanished or died. But the whole rigmarole must be gone through again to satisfy English law, and they must cast from their minds anything that they had heard, read or seen about the infamous crash.

The jury would be in the public eye, “but you must not let that deter youfrom your job. There is no reason why the facts should overawe you.”Whatever theories had been propounded over the past decade, the decision on how Diana and Dodi died was “yours and yours alone”. He cautioned them against private research on the internet. They must reach a verdict purely on the evidence in court.

From a panel of 25 brought into court, the final jury was selected by ballot. The coroner told them: “Most, if not all, of you will remember where you were when you heard about the death of the Princess of Wales.”

He reminded them that they were not in a criminal court; no one present had been charged with a crime. Their task was to discover how the couple died, not to apportion blame.

Lord Justice Scott Baker, with the agreement of the legal teams — 25 lawyers and their clerks — vowed that the hearing would be completed within six months.

At one side of the court sat Mr Al Fayed and his aides. As far away as possible sat Lady Sarah McCorquodale, the Princess’s sister, and Major Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, private secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry. Centre stage was taken by Michael Mansfield, QC, representing Mr Al Fayed, and Ian Burnett, QC, counsel for the inquest.

Finally, the coroner read a 150-page statement outlining what he said were the undisputed facts and highlighting areas where contention might arise.

It took little more than an hour for contention to surface. During the lunchtime adjournment Michael Cole, the bouffant-haired spokesman for Mr Al Fayed, said that his master was surprised at the tone and the contents of the statement.

“His lawyers had been led to believe that it would be a brief outline of the uncontested facts of the case. At an early stage, highly contentious and disputed material was introduced by the coroner when this should be presented to the jury in due course.”

Claiming that the statement “could present an appearance of bias, whether or not this was intended”, the Al Fayed legal team objected to the coroner’s description of the speed of the Mercedes in the tunnel, the number of vehicles in the tunnel and comments that Henri Paul, the chauffeur who also died in the crash, is said to have made to photographers at the Ritz.

In his statement the coroner said: “Mr Al Fayed maintains that the crash was not an accident but murder in the furtherance of a conspiracy by the Establishment, in particular His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, who used the security services to carry it out.” He said Mr Al Fayed had spoken of murder within minutes of the crash and that it had remained his primary allegation ever since.

He showed the jury a photograph of Diana in a leopard-print swimsuit during her Mediterranean holiday as a guest of the Al Fayeds, pointing out it had been taken before Dodi joined the party. He seemed to suggest that she was not pregnant but a 36-year-old woman struggling to resume her youthful figure. “I am unaware of any suggestion that she and Dodi were close before the holiday.”

Then he showed the jury another image, taken by a paparazzo through the windscreen of the Mercedes and showing Diana and Dodi, which is sometimes claimed to have been taken in the Alma tunnel. He said that the picture was taken outside the Ritz Hotel in Paris before they set off.

Rene Delorm, Dodi Fayed’s butler, will give evidence that he saw Mr Fayed stroking the Princess’s tummy as he bent before her on one knee, the coroner said. She whispered, ‘Yes’, Mr Delorm will say, although he could not be sure what she was consenting to. But witnesses close to the Princess will attest that she had no intention of marrying Mr Fayed, the coroner said.

The inquest also heard of an allegation, set down in a letter to her then butler, Paul Burrell, that the Prince of Wales was planning to kill or to injure Diana so that he could marry Tiggy Legge-Bourke, former nanny to his children. Diana shared her concerns with Lord Mishcon, one of her lawyers, during a meeting at Kensington Palace in October 1995.

The jury was told that in a note of the meeting Lord Mischon wrote: “Her Royal Highness (HRH) said she had been informed by reliable sources whom she did not wish to name, that A, the Queen would be abdicating in April and the Prince of Wales would assume the throne.” She feared that efforts would be made to “get rid of her, via some accident in her car such as prepared brake failure”. The note went on: “I could not believe what I was hearing.”

The note also said that Diana had told Lord Mishcon that the ideal situation would be for the Prince of Wales to abdicate for Prince William.

The hearing continues.

— A series of complaints lodged by Mohamed Al Fayed at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 2002 were thrown out last night by a chamber of seven judges. He claimed that the French police failed in their duty to investigate the deaths. They said that he had failed to show that the French proceedings lacked fairness. The key issues

The key issues

In July Lord Justice Scott Baker released a “list of likely issues” that could arise, including:

— Whether driver error caused the collision, and whether a Fiat Uno was involved

— Whether the actions of the paparazzi contributed to the crash

— Whether the road/tunnel layout was inherently dangerous

— Whose decision it was that the Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed should leave by Ritz rear entrance

— Why Henri Paul had so much money in his possession

— Whether the Princess of Wales’s life would have been saved if she had reached hospital sooner

— Whether she was pregnant

— Whether the evidence of Richard Tomlinson [the former M16 agent who claimed that Henri Paul was a spy and that there had been M16 officers at the British Embassy in Paris before the crash] is relevant

— Whether correspondence belonging to the Princess of Wales (including some from the Duke of Edinburgh) has vanished

Who’s who

Lord Justice Scott Baker, the coroner The fourth coroner to deal with the case took over in June when the previous judge stepped down after the High Court overturned her decision not to hold the inquest in front of a jury

Michael Mansfield, QC Mohamed Al Fayed’s barrister has been a key figure in some of the most controversial legal cases – he represented the Birmingham Six and Barry George, the man convicted of murdering the TV presenter Jill Dando

Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton The private secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry will be at the inquest, although they are not expected to be called as witnesses

Lady Sarah McCorquodale The Princess’s older sister is representing the Spencer family

Richard Keen, QC Representing the parents of Henri Paul, the chauffeur at the wheel when the Mercedes crashed

Ian Croxford, QC Representing Frank Klein, president of the Ritz Hotel, Paris, and an interested party because Paul was a hotel employee

Ian Burnett, QC Later this week the counsel for the inquest will show jurors a 3-D computerised recreation of events in the tunnel

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