Fayed asks judge for inquiry into Diana crash

Mohamed al-Fayed yesterday called on a Scottish judge to consider whether his son Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales were murdered by the British security services.

Diana, 36, and Dodi, 42, died with their driver, Henri Paul, when their Mercedes crashed in the Pont d'Alma underpass in Paris in August, 1997. Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees Jones, recovered after suffering severe injuries. The car was travelling from the Ritz, which is owned by Mohamed al-Fayed.

Although a judicial investigation in France concluded that Paul, assistant security manager at the Ritz, had consumed alcohol and prescription drugs and lost control of the car at high speed as he tried to outrun photographers, Mr Fayed rejected the findings.

He has spent more than £3m on investigators, scientists and lawyers to amass a dossier on the crash and other events which he says point to an establishment conspiracy to murder Diana and his son.

Having failed in his attempts to win a public inquiry in England, Mr Fayed took his case to the Court of Session in Edinburgh under the European Convention on Human Rights in an attempt to overturn a rejection by the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd. The millionaire businessman is largely based in London and Surrey, but he also owns Balnagown Castle, an estate on the Cromarty Firth in Easter Ross, which brings him under Scottish jurisdiction.

Yesterday, at the start of a four-day judicial review, he launched an attempt to force the Scottish courts to order a public inquiry under Article Two of the European Convention on Human Rights. The legislation, enshrined in Scottish law, gives next of kin the right to be properly informed of the circumstances of a death where there are grounds to believe it may been caused unlawfully or by force.

Mr Fayed's legal team is led by Richard Keen QC, who secured the acquittal of Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the second man charged with the Lockerbie bombing.

Mr Keen told the court his client suspected Dodi's life had been taken by force because there were "numerous matters which cast material doubt" on the crash being simply an accident. He said: "In the immediate aftermath of the crash, French authorities reported to authorities in the United Kingdom, through Scotland Yard, that the circumstances of the crash were regarded as suspicious. [But] before any substantive investigation, the senior police officer responsible for investigating the crash determined that it was an accident attributable to the driver of the Mercedes, who it was then alleged, was drunk and indeed an alcoholic."

Mr Keen said this meant certain issues, including the possible involvement of other vehicles, were not being explored by the investigators and that instead the inquiry by the French judge, Herve Stephan, centred on "whether or not certain press photographers might have been implicated in an accident or guilty of a failure to assist persons in danger".

He added: "Even within the scope of that investigation, it must be observed that Judge Stephan's conduct was called into question by the French judicial authorities."

Using plans and aerial photographs to retrace the five-minute journey from the hotel, on which Mr Keen said was a "highly unusual route", he said that at two corners where the Mercedes might have been expected to turn off, witnesses said its path had been blocked by other vehicles.

Mr Keen also said there were 10 traffic cameras on the route and a speed camera at the tunnel entrance, none of which, Mr Fayed had been told, were operational at the time. This had come as "a surprise" to one motorist who had been charged with speeding on data from the tunnel camera 15 minutes earlier. "The absence of film from any of the cameras created more concerns when it emerged that there were other vehicles involved in the circumstances of the crash."

These were a white Fiat Uno and a large dark motorcycle with two male riders who had pursued the Mercedes into the tunnel and then overtaken it. "At which point," Mr Keen went on, "two independent observers entering the tunnel from different directions reported a large, indeed enormous, radar-like flash of light in the tunnel".

Outside court, Mr Fayed said the country deserved to know how Diana and Dodi died. "What I am doing I am doing for the nation and for the ordinary people," he said as he held up a cutting of a newspaper poll, and added: "Eighty-five per cent believe Diana was murdered with my son. I am not the only one." Paul Burrell, the former royal butler, has said Diana had warned she would be killed in a car crash.

A final decision on the case is expected in the new year.