How a murder plot of ferocious complexity involving a cast of thousands, from that prominent Nazi the Duke of Edinburgh to a photographer’s dog, could swing into action in the space of an hour was yesterday’s great unanswered question.

After nearly five months and nearly 150 witnesses it was finally the turn of Mohamed Al Fayed to give evidence at the inquests of his son, Dodi, and Diana, Princess of Wales. During a day in the witness box he implicated the entire British and French Establishments with the sole exception of the Queen, whom he regarded as an unimportant figure.

What he lacked was evidence. It all lay in the files of MI6, he said repeatedly, and he was prevented by a steel wall from getting at it.

Having taken the oath in the name of Allah, he surprised the crowded court immediately. “I make no allegations,” he said. He then spent the rest of the day making them, beginning with the Duke of Edinburgh, who, he alleges, was the mastermind behind the conspiracy to murder the Princess and Dodi.

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BACKGROUND

• Coroner blasts Burrell lies and gold-digging

• Diana death 'conspiracy' thrown out by coroner

• Al Fayed: murder, racism, cover-up

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• In quotes: Mohamed Al Fayed at the Diana inquests

The Prince of Wales had also participated in the plot, Mr Al Fayed claimed. Ian Burnett, QC, for the coroner, asked him if anyone else in the Royal Family had taken part. “They are the main two. I don’t think the Queen is important. The Duke of Edinburgh runs the country behind the scenes; he is the actual head of the Royal Family. He’s a racist; he grew up with Nazis,” Mr Al Fayed maintained, adding for good measure that one of the Duke’s aunts had married one of Hitler’s generals.

“And beneath the surface he has a German name – Frankenstein. Well, it sounds like Frankenstein.” The Duke is a member of the Danish-German aristocratic House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.

As a former sponsor of the Royal Windsor Horse Show, Mr Al Fayed said that he had enjoyed good relations with the Royal Family before the crash. “I even gave a dinner for Prince Philip and his Nazi German relatives. Now I am insulted, humiliated.”

He began to read from a typed script, the thrust of which was that Lords Condon and Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, successive Metropolitan Police commissioners, had failed immediately to give the previous coroner a note written by the Princess expressing fears for her safety. He failed to say that the note had been handed to the present coroner when the inquest finally opened.

Lord Stevens, who prepared an 800-page report on the deaths, concluding that they were the result of an accident, had been corrupted and blackmailed into drawing that conclusion, and the report had been written with the help of MI6. Lord Stevens had also cleared Harrods out of its entire stock of caviar.

“You are here to give evidence, and not to argue a case or give speeches,” Mr Burnett cautioned the witness. Showing immense restraint Lord Justice Scott Baker, the coroner, allowed Mr Al Fayed to finish reading his note to the jury.

The list of participants in the conspiracy lengthened by the minute. By lunchtime they included the Royal Family, Tony Blair, British and French intelligence services, the Princess’s sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale, the British Ambassador in Paris, the French police and medical services, and even the ambulance that took the Princess to hospital; according to Mr Al Fayed, it had MI6 agents on board. “There were a lot of people in this plot,” the coroner observed drily.

In fact, MI6 was everywhere and had stooges in every walk of British life, including the media and – a cheeky one to mention in the Royal Courts of Justice – stooge lawyers.

The only matter in which Mr Al Fayed was able to give anything approaching evidence was a telephone call that he claims to have had with Dodi and the Princess an hour before the crash. It was then that he first learnt, he said, that she was pregnant and that the couple were planning to announce their engagement two days later.

There had been an avalanche of evidence to prove that the Princess had not been pregnant, Mr Burnett said. “All these witnesses come and sit here and say baloney things,” Mr Al Fayed replied.

Richard Horwell, QC, for the Metropolitan Police, asked Mr Al Fayed: “Why have you not sued all these people for killing your son? Is the answer that there is absolutely no evidence? You have unlimited funds; why have you not taken to court a private prosecution for murder?”

Mr Al Fayed wagged a finger at him across the court. “I am trying to get the evidence. And don’t bully me.”

Questioning turned to the mysterious white Fiat Uno in the Alma tunnel that Mr Al Fayed believes was being driven by James Andanson, a freelance photographer and trained MI6 assassin. “Can you explain why he took his dog on this mission? And can you explain why the might of the Royal Family could only afford a Fiat Uno for this murder plot?”

Mr Al Fayed said that the killer would have wanted to use his own car.

The hearings continue.

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