- "This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous
-- my husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious
head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry," scribbled
Diana in a note to her butler and confidant Paul Burrell.
-
-
- (AFP) -- Police in Britain were called into look into
the car crash in Paris that took the life of Princess Diana more than six
years ago, as it emerged that she had feared Prince Charles was out to
harm her.
-
- Opening the first British probe into the death of "the
people's princess", coroner Michael Burgess said he has asked the
Metropolitan Police to delve into unrelenting speculation that Diana's
death was more than just an accident.
-
- "I am aware there is speculation these deaths were
not the result of a sad, but relatively straightforward, road traffic accident
in Paris," Burgess said, referring to the crash that also killed Diana's
lover, Dodi al-Fayed.
-
- "I have asked the Metropolitan Police commissioner
to make inquiries," he added, referring to Sir John Stevens, the most
senior police officer in the country.
-
- Diana and Fayed, along with their driver Henri Paul,
died on August 31, 1997, when their black Mercedes-Benz limousine rammed
into a pillar in an underpass beneath the Pont d'Alma in Paris as they
were travelling to Fayed's apartment.
-
- Following a two-year investigation, the French authorities
concluded that the accident was chiefly the result of Paul driving too
fast under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs -- but conspiracy
theories have persisted.
-
- The horrific crash came a year after Diana's divorce
from Prince Charles, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II and heir to the
British throne, was decreed final after their increasingly stormy 15-year
marriage.
-
- In a front-page exclusive on Tuesday, the mass circulation
Daily Mirror newspaper identified Charles as the person whom Diana feared
was conspiring to physically harm her 10 months before the Paris crash.
-
- "This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous
-- my husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious
head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry," scribbled
Diana in a note to her butler and confidant Paul Burrell, according to
the tabloid.
-
- There was no reaction from Buckingham Palace and Charles'
official residence Clarence House to the Daily Mirror report, which was
repeated in other British news media.
-
- While he was married to Diana, Charles conducted an intimate
relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, an English aristocrat who remains
his close companion and potential second wife.
-
- The existence of Diana's note first came to light in
October last year when it was cited, without Charles's name, in Burrell's
best-selling tell-all memoirs of his life in royal service.
-
- Fayed's father, Mohamed al-Fayed, the Egyptian-born owner
of Harrods department store in London and the Paris Ritz hotel, has long
suspected that Diana, 36, and his son Dodi, 42, were the victims of foul
play.
-
- He has contended that the Paris crash was masterminded,
possibly by secret agents on order from high up, to stop Diana from marrying
his son.
-
- Rumours also persist that Diana -- the mother of Prince
William and Prince Harry -- was pregnant with Dodi's baby.
-
- "This is what we have been waiting for for six years,"
Fayed told reporters as he arrived Tuesday at the inquest with his lawyer.
"At last, I hope we can see the light."
-
- Burgess opened two separate inquests on Tuesday -- one
for Diana in central London, the other for Dodi in Surrey, southwest of
the British capital, where the tycoon's son lived.
-
- He said the results of the police investigation "will
help me to decide whether such matters (conspiracy theories) will fall
within the scope of the investigation carried out at the inquests".
-
- Burgess, who will have access to 6,000 pages of evidence
from the French authorities, said it would probably take 12 to 15 months
before he could hold public hearings due to the complexity of the case.
-
- Under English law, a coroner's inquest needs to be held
to determine the cause of death whenever the body of a British citizen
who dies abroad is returned home for burial.
-
- But in the case of Diana and Fayed, inquests had to wait
first for the completion of the French investigation and then the outcome
of criminal and civil court cases initiated in France by the elder Fayed.
-
- Diana's death triggered a remarkable outpouring of public
grief in Britain, with Prime Minister Tony Blair calling the charismatic
blonde -- an icon of the 1980s and 1990s -- "the people's princess".
-
- Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan defended his decision
to publish Charles' name on Tuesday, saying the content of Diana's "utterly
sensational" letter to Burrell was going to emerge during the inquest
anyway.
-
- "Is it preposterous? Probably. I just don't know,"
he said of the letter's contents. "What I do know is that thankfully
we finally have an inquest where perhaps we can finally lay to rest all
these conspiracy theories."
-
-
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