The Investigation

There would never have been an investigation but for the resolute determination of Mohamed Al Fayed.

Frustrated by a French inquiry flawed to the point of incompetence, the Chairman of Harrods said that there had to be a British investigation into the deaths of his eldest son Dodi and the Fayed family’s friend, Diana, Princess of Wales.

Attacked by British newspapers owned by the upper class Establishment, Mohamed persisted. He would not be intimidated by personal vilification by newspapers such as the Sunday Telegraph, whose then editor Dominic Lawson was a regular conduit for stories serving the purposes of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. Lawson’s brother-in-law Christopher Monckton is a very senior spy whose activities led to his expulsion from Serbia. Inside MI6, there has been much resentment at Mohamed’s publicly reported allegations that British intelligence agents had orchestrated the crash in Paris.

Mohamed began his own investigation almost five years before Lord Stevens began his. In the immediate aftermath of the Paris crash, Mohamed set to work his Director of Security, John Macnamara.

Macnamara, a former Detective Chief Superintendent at New Scotland Yard with a career total of 12 commendations for exemplary police work, carried out a painstaking examination of every aspect of the tragedy. He assembled a team of experts to help him with the forensic science work. Over a period of years, he compiled a dossier. It made a compelling case that Dodi and Diana had not died as a result of a simple traffic accident.

As the father of Dodi and a good friend of the Princess’s late father, Earl (John) Spencer, Mohamed considered it a solemn duty to make public the information that had been collated by dogged and persistent private investigation by his team of specialists.

The limited revelations that Mohamed permitted, alerted the public to a state of affairs many of them long suspected, that the “People’s Princess” had been murdered because her public comments and her high profile initiatives, including a successful campaign on behalf of British Red Cross against the manufacture, sale and deployment of landmines, was a threat not just to the British state, but to the Royal Family itself, the House of Windsor.

An opinion poll published in a British national newspaper showed that 94 out of every 100 British people believed that the Princess and Dodi had been killed as a result of foul play. With public opinion running so strongly, it became embarrassing for the Establishment that no inquests had ever been held into the deaths of Dodi and the Princess, contrary to British law.

At long last, the Surrey Coroner, Michael Burgess, was compelled to act. He asked Scotland Yard to conduct an inquiry to aid him in his inquest deliberations. Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the retired Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens, was asked to carry out the inquiry. He separately conducted an investigation into Mr Al Fayed’s allegation of conspiracy to murder.

Stevens set up Operation Paget in January 2004. A team of 14 detectives, now based at Putney in southwest London, began investigating, France, England and other countries.

Lord Stevens assured Mohamed that he would go wherever the evidence took him. He also said he would give Mohamed sight of his report before he closed the investigation, so that Mohamed could suggest any new lines of enquiry that might have been overlooked.

The investigation was proceeding and still had much work to do when there was a sudden and violent change of gear. Coroner Burgess was pushed aside. In his place was appointed a woman straight out of the top drawer of the British Establishment.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the daughter of a High Court Judge and sister of a former Conservative Attorney General, was brought out of retirement to take over the inquests. Her first act was to ensure that Lord Stevens immediately closed his enquiry and present her with his report.

It was immediately clear that this retired judge had been brought in for no other purpose but return a verdict of “accidental death”, commensurate with Judge Herve Stephan’s finding, when an “open verdict” was the very least that many commentators had expected.

It was reported that Lord Stevens intended to make public his report on 14th December 2006. It would be unprecedented for a report of this nature to be released in this way. The Report that Lord Stevens has delivered to Lady Butler Sloss is his investigation into Mr Al Fayed’s allegation of ‘conspiracy to murder’. His report to the Coroner has not yet been delivered. There are two reports. The report which has been delivered to the Coroner is the property of the Metropolitan Police, and not the Coroner.

Whatever the findings of either report, Mohamed will go on fighting to reveal how his son and the Princess were murdered and who is responsible.

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