Diana and Dodi target of a plot: court told
LONDON (Reuters) - Mohamed al-Fayed was convinced Princess Diana and his son Dodi were victims of an assassination plot the moment he heard they had died in a Paris car crash, the inquest into their deaths was told on Thursday.
The luxury Harrods storeowner alleges that the couple were killed by British security services on the orders of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband and Diana's former father-in-law.
Al-Fayed says Diana was pregnant with Dodi's child and that the couple were planning to marry. He claims the royal family could not bear the idea of Diana marrying a Muslim.
Backing for his conspiracy theory was given in court on Thursday by Franz Klein, president of the Ritz Hotel in Paris where the couple spent their last hours in 1997, as he gave evidence to the inquest at London's High Court.
Klein, who was on holiday in the south of France at the time, broke the news by phone of Dodi's death to Mohamed al-Fayed whose instant reaction was to tell Klein: "I know more than you know or, more than you think."
"Mr Fayed, very calm, said to me: 'This is not an accident. This is ... a plot or an assassination'," Klein told the court.
Klein also told the court Dodi had told him he and Diana were going to get engaged and live in Villa Windsor, where Edward VIII and divorcee Wallis Simpson lived after the monarch's abdication. Mohamed al-Fayed had bought the Paris property.
"He did not mention the princess by name over the phone but he did tell me that he was going to stay in Paris to live. He told me he was going to move into the Villa Windsor with his girlfriend and he also told me, all the time in English, that they were going to get married," Klein said.
Under British law, an inquest is needed to determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.
The inquest, expected to last up to six months and cost up to 10 million pounds ($20 million), was opened after the conclusion of major British and French police investigations.
Those investigations concluded Diana and Dodi died because their chauffeur, Henri Paul, was drunk and drove too fast through a Paris road tunnel, crashing the vehicle into a pillar.
Asked if he thought Henri Paul had a drinking problem, Klein told the court: "Not at all".
(Editing by Janet Lawrence)
