October, 2006: New
witnesses have come forward with evidence surrounding the
death of Princess
Diana
According
to Bilderberg.org and Sue Read, of the Daily Mail,
astonishing claims by new
witnesses are being examined by
British detectives investigating Diana's death.
They seem
incredible. But if true, they could rock the Royal Family to its
foundations.
On the night that Diana, Princess of
Wales died, the lights
of the British Embassy — less than
a mile from the accident spot in Paris —
blazed until dawn
finally broke over the French capital.
Inside the imposing
building, diplomats summoned from their sleep by the
British ambassador, Sir
Michael Jay, struggled to monitor
the tragedy that was unfolding.
Millions of words
have been written about the moment that Diana, with
her
Muslim boyfriend Dodi Fayed, smashed into pillar 13 of the Pont d’Alma road
tunnel as they were being driven from the Ritz Hotel in a
black Mercedes at
12.20am on Sunday, August 31, 1997.
Ever since, the precise chronology of
the fateful
night and the roles played by the Royal Family and the Government
have been accepted almost without serious challenge.
Yet the Mail can reveal
today that new eye-witnesses
have emerged in the past few weeks with explosive
testimony which raises profound questions about the
influence of the House of
Windsor and the Establishment
over events surrounding the Princess’s death.
These
fresh accounts include the astonishing claim that the Queen’s most
senior and trusted courtier was seen in Paris, at the
British Embassy, half an
hour before the crash.
Furthermore, they include a baffling allegation that
the RAF crew which flew Tony Blair from his Sedgefield
constituency to London to
greet the Princess’s repatriated
body had been on continual standby to make the
flight from
two days earlier — when Diana was still alive.
During this
investigation, the Mail has also received confirmation
that two diplomats
working for the secret intelligence
service MI6 were operating at the British
Embassy in Paris
during the weeks before Diana’s death.
These two senior men
— who have both enjoyed glittering careers — have admitted
their intelligence
roles to Lord Stevens, the ex-head of
Scotland Yard who is heading the official
inquiry into
whether there was any conspiracy to murder the Princess.
In the
Paris crash, Dodi was killed outright and the Princess was
at first thought to
have survived. Yet despite attempts by
surgeons, she was declared beyond medical
help at the
Pitie Salpetriere hospital at 4am.
By then, dozens of phone
calls had flashed between the British Embassy and Balmoral
Castle, the royal
retreat in Scotland where the Queen and
Diana’s ex-husband, Prince Charles, were
holidaying with
Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12.
The
Queen was the first to be told of the accident, at 2am,
when she was woken by
her personal page. Still in her
dressing gown, she and Prince Philip anxiously
paced the
tartan-carpeted corridors throughout the night.
Alerted
immediately, Prince Charles retired to his private sitting
room next to the
Queen’s dressing room. There, he made
calls and answered those from Paris coming
into the
castle’s switchboard and his mobile phone.
On the ground floor of
the castle, the Queen's deputy private secretary Sir Robin
Janvrin based himself
in the equerries' room, where he
also fielded incoming messages.
Most
pertinently, Sir
Robin was on duty because his superior — the Queen’s private
secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, a plummy-voiced Old
Etonian and Princess Diana's
brother-in-law — had taken a
weekend's leave.
Meanwhile, the Prime
Minister,
who was in his North-East constituency, is said to have been woken by
a call from Sir Michael Jay which had been forwarded by a
secure satellite phone
via Downing Street.
At first,
he was told the Princess had been involved in
an accident
and then, later, of her death. It was then he began working on that
memorable — and apparently impromptu — speech which he
delivered several hours
later, describing Diana as the
'People's Princess'.
It was a fitting title
and one
that the millions mourning Diana embraced.
Yet just as the
outpouring of grief continued in the days after the crash,
so, too, have those
nagging doubts — and conspiracy
theories — about Diana’s death, which refuse to
abate.
As a result, Lord Stevens’s team of ten detectives have
interviewed hundreds of people whose lives crossed Diana’s
own. Prince Charles
has been questioned. Sir Michael Jay,
now Permanent Secretary at the Foreign
Office, has been
asked to outline his role on the night of the crash.
In a
dramatic development in recent weeks, Sir Robert Fellowes
— now Lord Fellowes —
has been asked about his whereabouts
during that tragic weekend.
Significantly, the
detectives are also planning to speak to Maud
Morel-Coujard, the French legal official who oversaw the
police operation on the
night of the crash. Indeed, she
was waiting at the hospital when Diana was
brought there
by ambulance just after 2am.
She is in a unique position to
know exactly what happened and, crucially, her evidence
may give credence to the
allegations about Lord Fellowes,
Mr Blair’s flight and the two spies.
Her
recollections
may also explain the feverish volume of communications between
Paris, London and Scotland that night.
Mme
Morel-Coujard is expected to say
that some instructions on
the treatment of the dying Princess were issued by Sir
Michael Jay, who was also at the hospital. He was, in
turn, receiving his orders
via his mobile from the British
Embassy, Balmoral and Downing Street.
Most
contentiously, Mme Morel-Coujard will reveal that a
decision to embalm Diana's
body two hours before it was
flown back to England was made by 'the British
authorities'. (Indeed, French law explicitly bans the
practice if a post-mortem
examination is planned. This is
because the preserving chemical formaldehyde
corrupts
toxicology tests, including those for pregnancy.)
Her
revelations will stoke the controversy over why Diana’s
body should have
undergone this process prior to such a
key forensic examination, which took
place on the Sunday
at 8pm at a West London mortuary.
Was it — as some
continue to maintain, despite denials — because Diana was
pregnant with Dodi’s
baby? And did someone want such an
embarrassing fact kept secret?
Recently,
the notion of
Diana being pregnant was vehemently discounted in the Mail on
Sunday by Dominic Lawson, the husband of Diana's close
friend Rosa Monckton.
He wrote: "It is in a way
obscene that such speculation is the subject of a
public
inquiry (by Lord Stevens)."
He explained his wife had spent a week
with Diana before her death and had told Lord Stevens's
team that the Princess
could not possibly have been
pregnant with Dodi's baby.
He added: "Rosa felt
obliged to reveal that, when they said goodbye on August
20, 1997, Diana's
period had started and therefore it was
biologically impossible for her to have
been pregnant at
the time of her death."
So what evidence has Lord
Stevens's investigation uncovered so far? During his
three-year inquiry — which
has cost £2million — he has let
slip little about his findings. But at a book
festival
last month, he admitted new witnesses had been found who may provide
fresh clues.
He is now writing an interim report (it
is expected to be
finished by September) for the Royal
coroner, Michael Burgess, who will hold an
inquest next
year once Lord Stevens has completed a final analysis that includes
the testimony provided by the new eye-witnesses.
The
Mail has learned they
include two men with extraordinary
tales. The first, whom we will call Mr X, was
based at the
British Embassy in Paris and formerly worked for the Foreign Office
in London.
His tantalising evidence emerged only
recently through a third
party. If true, it will link the
Royal Family to events in Paris on the weekend
of the
Princess’s death.
Mr X is said to be a middle-aged, English
wireless operator at the embassy.
He came on duty in
the early evening of
August 30, expecting his night shift
to be routine. From his office in the
communications room,
encrypted phone calls and messages were sent from the
embassy via UK listening stations to Downing Street, the
heads of Whitehall
departments and, if necessary, senior
aides of the Royal Family.
Mr X was
proud of his job
and is an ardent royalist. However, something unexpected
happened that night which he found deeply troubling. He
says that just before
midnight (as Diana was preparing to
leave the Ritz Hotel with Dodi) two
well-spoken men burst
through the door of the communications room. Described as
"public school", they brusquely ordered Mr X to leave his
post and not to return
until told.
Mr X kept silent
about this pertinent episode until 2000 because
he had
signed the Official Secrets Act.
But then, apparently, he named
one of the men to a third party. Exploding with anger, he
explained: "It was
that b*****d Fellowes. He turfed me out
of my own office. He was in Paris the
night Diana died."
Of course, Mr X may have been mistaken. Well-spoken
Englishmen in smart suits are apt to sound and look very
similar. Furthermore,
Mr X only saw the two men for a few
minutes. But his story, however incredible,
is being
actively investigated by Lord Stevens and his team.
The Mail
understands that in an initial conversation with the Diana
squad, Lord Fellowes
has said he was enjoying a break at
his Norfolk estate with his wife — Diana's
sister, Lady
Jane Fellowes. He has dismissed the claim he was in Paris that
weekend or any part of the night Diana died.
And what
of the second new
witness, whom we will call Mr Y? He has
come forward with a scenario which, if
true, will also
shed doubt on the official version of Diana's death.
The
Mail understands that he was interviewed at length by Lord
Stevens's detectives
recently. Mr Y was one of the
security staff on duty at Tony Blair’s Sedgefield
constituency during the weekend that Diana died.
It
was one of the first
weekends the Labour Prime Minister
had spent there with his family since his
election. When
news arrived overnight that Diana was dead, Mr Blair's weekend,
which had been largely free of public engagements, was
thrown into disarray.
After delivering his 'People's
Princess' tribute, he returned to London to
receive
Diana's body at Northolt airport at 5pm on the Sunday.
The Prime
Minister's wife and their three children were put on a
scheduled British Midland
flight from Teesside airport at
tea-time for them to return to Downing Street.
Normally,
the Prime Minister would have travelled with them.
But instead, he
boarded an RAF plane piloted by a crew based in Scotland
which had flown to
Teesside. Waiting on the tarmac for Mr
Blair was Mr Y.
Idly chatting to the
co-pilot, he was
told something very strange.
The co-pilot, according to
information now with the Diana squad, asked him: "What’s
really going on? We’ve
been on standby in Scotland since
5pm on Friday waiting to make this flight to
Northolt with
the Prime Minister."
Incredibly, and if Mr Y’s memory of
his conversation with the co-pilot is correct, it would
mean that Diana's death
was not only expected — it was
actually planned.
Yet can that really be
true? Or is
it just another fantastic conspiracy theory, one of the countless
that still surround the Princess's death?
Could Mr Y
have perhaps
misinterpreted the words of the RAF co-pilot?
Or has his memory played tricks
about events which
happened almost a decade ago?
Mr Y's claim is just one of
the many mysteries that are now being unravelled, checked
and re-examined by the
Diana squad.
Perhaps none of
the unanswered questions is more puzzling than
the roles
of the two MI6 officers who were based at the British Embassy in
Paris. Both were listed on the embassy's staff list as
diplomats. Yet one had
mysteriously only just been posted
to the French capital a few days before the
crash.
Their names first came to the attention of the Diana squad two
years ago when a continuous stream of informants —
including one of particular
significance because of his
position in Britain’s special forces — insisted that
the
pair were spies who were both implicated in the Princess's death.
Significantly, in one instance, the Diana squad was
passed a nine-line note
on a flimsy piece of paper
purporting to come from an insider at the
headquarters of
the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It has been seen by the
Mail and names both men.
Then it adds: "If you are
brave enough, dig deeper
to learn about them. Both MI6.
Both were involved at the highest level in the
murder of
the Princess."
The files at the Diana squad headquarters, of
course, are stacked high with such wild allegations from
shadowy informants.
Many have a habit of being unprovable
or are simply the imaginings of
over-fertile minds.
However, the Mail has learned that both these men, in
their mid-40s, have been interviewed by officers about
their movements on the
weekend the Princess died. They
were given permission to speak about their roles
for the
first time by the head of MI6, John Scarlett.
The men have produced
tickets and documents dating from 1997 which prove they
were not in Paris that
weekend. One was in the South of
France with his wife and in-laws. The other was
taking a
short trip to Greece.
Both have told Lord Stevens they only
returned to the British Embassy, overlooking the eternally
fashionable Rue du
Faubourg St Honore near the Champs
Elysees, after Diana's body had left French
soil for
England.
That answer may not surprise Lord Stevens. But equally, it
won't stop him looking into the matter further. From the
start of his inquiry,
he promised that his team would "go
wherever the evidence takes us" in the quest
for the truth
about Diana's death.
And, if necessary, that includes the
powerful inner sanctums of the British
Establishment.
