Reaction
to the verdicts | The
remaining questions | The
paparazzi | What
now for Al Fayed? | What
we learnt | The
key moments
Mohamed Al Fayed in the witness box
When Mr Al Fayed gave evidence in mid-February he believed his conspiracy
theory was still a runner and he launched an impertinent and intemperate
attack on the Royal Family, naming both the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince
of Wales as lead conspirators.
He said: “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, and one of his
aunts married one of Hitler’s generals. Beneath the surface he has a German
name — Frankenstein. Well, it sounds like Frankenstein.”
In reality, the Duke is a member of the Danish-German aristocratic family of
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg.
Having named most of the British and French establishments as plotters against
his son and the Princess, Mr Al Fayed faced cross-examination from the
deadly Richard Horwell, QC, counsel for the Metropolitan Police. “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 Mr Horwell across the court. “I am trying to
get the evidence,” the witness countered, on the verge of losing his temper.
“And don’t bully me.”
The CCTV footage
The jury watched endless film of the movements of Henri Paul and other members
of the Ritz staff coming and going throughout the evening in the hours
before the crash. The footage sprang to life when it showed the Princess and
Dodi emerging from the hotel’s Imperial Suite, walking down a corridor,
descending in a service lift, and waiting in the rear lobby for their car to
arrive. She laughed and smiled like the old Diana, and for a moment it was
difficult to believe that she had been dead for ten years. Dodi’s body
language was solicitous and attentive, slipping an arm around her waist and
looking like the cat that got the cream.
The Alma Tunnel
Not since the Old Bailey took itself to Belarus for a war crimes trial had a
British jury travelled abroad to see for themselves what they had been
hearing about. Paris police closed the riverside expressway for half an hour
as the jury, led by the tall figure of Lord Justice Scott Baker, walked into
the tunnel and stood in a semicircle around pillar 13. There was silence;
the fatal crash was suddenly and disturbingly real.
The Rumpole connection
According to Mr Al Fayed, Lord Fellowes, then the Queen’s private secretary,
was in the British Embassy in Paris masterminding a communications centre on
the night of the crash. The urbane and patrician Lord Fellowes, who is
married to Diana’s sister Jane, told the jury that he could not possibly
have been there that evening as he and his wife were sitting in a Norfolk
church listening to a lecture by Sir John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of
the Bailey. The talk, he added, had been “most interesting”.
Cross-examined by Michael Mansfield, QC, counsel for Mr Al Fayed, on whether
the Queen might have told Paul Burrell about “dark forces”, Lord Fellowes
remained a model of calm. “I am not prepared to comment on the Queen’s
character or get involved in that sort of thing. I am merely saying that as
a figure of speech it is very unlike her to use terms like ‘forces’ or ‘dark
forces’.”
The Fiat Uno
Much was made, but nothing proved, of a white Fiat Uno said to have been in
the tunnel at the time of the crash and to have received a glancing blow
from the Mercedes. Witnesses said there was a dog in the back, but the Fayed
camp argued that it was driven by James Andanson, a freelance photographer
and trained MI6 killer.
“Can you explain,” Richard Horwell asked, “why he took his dog on this
mission? And why the might of the Royal Family could only afford a Fiat Uno,
one of the world’s most underpowered cars, for this murder plot?” Ah, said
the Fayed side, he would have wanted to use his own car. They had no
explanation for the dog.
Paul Burrell in the box
The Princess’s former former butler endured three days of humiliation, at
times losing confidence and glancing desperately round the court as Michael
Mansfield did his considerable best to discredit him. “It was a very
confusing day. It’s not easy sitting up here with the pressure on, with an
eminent QC like yourself,” he whined after changing his story about where
exactly certain notes and letters from Diana were.
First he said they were in at his home in Cheshire, then he said he had given
them to his ghost writer, and they had been destroyed. Then he thought one
particular missing note containing secrets might be at his home in Florida.
Refusing to disclose the secrets in open court, he wrote them down and
handed them to the coroner. “You say there is not one secret but two,” Lord
Justice Scott Baker said. “But it seems to me they are not secrets at all,
and both are firmly in the public domain. One indeed is in your book The Way
We Were.”
Mr Burrell squirmed, and again complained of his ordeal. “Quite frankly, it’s
been horrid. It’s been quite disgraceful, actually. I never thought I would
have to be here and compelled to say what I had to say. I am confused about
a lot of things, Mr Mansfield.” He was further humiliated by being sent
overnight to his Cheshire home to look for documents. He brought back a
small assortment of junk, which the coroner read over his lunch break and
pronounced of no relevance.
Moneypenny
She was a real-life Miss Moneypenny, but the court knew her only as Miss X,
and press and public were not allowed to see her. She was one of a number of
anonymous MI6 officers who gave evidence on the inner workings of the secret
intelligence service, and she managed to make it sound stupefyingly dull. No
Bond-style derring-do, just mountains of paperwork. “It can sometimes be
very boring and bureaucratic, but we have to follow the rules,” she told the
jury.
She was called because, for the purpose of the inquest, she was given “God’s
Access”, permission to search all MI6’s files, a privilege normally
restricted to the director and his deputy. She found no files at all on the
Princess, but she did find one on Mohamed Al Fayed.
The parents
Henri Paul’s frail and elderly parents, giving evidence by videolink from
Paris, accused the French authorities of deciding their son was drunk only
hours after the crash. Giselle Paul, his 77-year old mother, said that her
son had never drunk alcohol to excess, and she had never seen him drunk.
The bodyguards
Kes Wingfield and his fellow bodyguard, Trevor Rees, told the inquest of their
grave doubts over Dodi’s plan to sneak himself and the Princess out of the
Ritz back door. Asked by Michael Mansfield why they had not put their
concerns to Mohamed Al Fayed, Mr Wingfield told the jury: “Dodi said his
father had approved it. The alternative would have been to ring up Mohamed
and ask, ‘Is your son lying?’.”
The mother
“She called the Princess a whore. She was messing about with effing
Muslim men and she was disgraceful.” Paul Burrell, reporting a phone
conversation he claimed to have overheard between the Princess and her
mother, Mrs Frances Shand Kydd.
The insult
“Not only was the mother of a future king conducting a high-profile campaign
against the manufacture and use of landmines, many supplied by the British
defence industry, but she was having an affair with an oily bedhopper, the
Muslim son of a businessman with a tarnished reputation who has been refused
a British passport.”
Michael Mansfield, attempting to suggest that the Princess’s association with
the Fayed family would have been seen by the Establishment as an alliance
made in hell. The phrase “oily bedhopper” was allegedly coined by Prince
Philip.
The therapist
Simone Simmons, one of the Princess’s many alternative therapists, claimed to
have seen two derogatory letters from the Duke of Edinburgh to Diana, and
admitted to writing two books on the Princess.
Richard Horwell asked her how much she had earned from her literary output.
“Not as much as you earn here in a week,” she retorted. Mr Horwell, whose
fees come from the taxpayer, replied: “I suggest you address that remark to
the other side of the room,” where sat three QCs, numerous junior counsel
and an army of solicitors, funded by the Fayed empire.
The rescuers
Sergeant Xavier Gourmelon, who arrived at the scene with a medically trained
fire service team within six minutes of the crash, told the jury by
videolink from Paris: “I was shown the woman in the back of the car. She was
conscious; she could speak to me. We gave first-aid treatment, and we
administered oxygen. She was moving her arms around and I attempted to calm
her down.”
But at around 1am, as rescuers were trying to free the Princess, her heart
stopped. “When we tried to get her out of the car to try to transfer her she
suffered a cardiac arrest, so we gave her heart massage right away and a few
seconds later she was resuscitated.”
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington
The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner was grilled by Richard Keen, QC,
for the parents of Henri Paul, on why he had told the elderly couple that
their son had not been drunk on the night of the crash. Mr Keen appeared on
the verge of accusing Lord Stevens of a cover-up. “These proceedings are
about getting to the truth; this is not a criminal trial. There is no
conspiracy here, Mr Keen,” Lord Stevens responded. The coroner intervened:
“Mr Keen, you are confusing an inquiry with criminal proceedings. And in the
grand scheme of things, where does it get us?”
The missing apology No 1
During his evidence, Lord Stevens departed from his script in a moment of
anger over attempts by the Fayed team to discredit his 800-page report into
the deaths, which concluded they were a tragic accident.
“There have been scurrilous allegations made about my conduct and that of my
team: negligent, hadn’t done our job properly, and that I had been got at.
What I am looking for is an apology in relation to this in due course.”
The rock
“Mr Burrell, you claim that Diana, Princess of Wales, regarded you as her
rock. You must have been a very porous rock.” Richard Keen, for the parents
of Henri Paul, to Paul Burrell.
The missing apology No 2
“Have you apologised to Trevor Rees-Jones (the bodyguard who survived the
crash) for your very serious allegation that he willingly took money to be a
mouthpiece for the security services?” Lord Justice Scott Baker to John
Macnamara, Mr Al Fayed’s head of security, who had attempted to discredit Mr
Rees-Jones’s account of the crash.
The half-truth
“A half-truth is good enough, so the public can learn half the truth but not
the whole truth. I see.” The coroner again to Mr Macnamara, who admitted
omitting details of Henri Paul’s drinking from an interview he gave to ABC
television, despite knowing about the driver’s consumption of two Ricard
spirits in the bar of the Ritz Hotel.
The stereotype
“A bunch of meddlers with a public school education and a free supply of
plastic explosives.” Richard Keen, QC, on the public perception of the
secret intelligence service.
Diana, Princess of Wales
“Emotionally, she felt she was still young. She wanted a husband to be there
for her, to have a normal relationship with him. I would say she was
concerned about her security, but she was not paranoid about it.” Hasnat
Khan, Pakistani heart surgeon, on his two-year affair with the Princess. She
had eventually dumped him, he claimed, in a written submission to the
hearing.
