Mohamed Al Fayed’s main witness at the inquest into Princess Diana’s death was discredited yesterday (13.02.08).
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The Harrods boss – whose son Dodi was also killed in the Paris car crash on August 31, 1997 – called forward a former British secret services agent who he thought would prove there was a plot by the British establishment to murder Diana and Dodi.
However, Richard Tomlinson was forced to admit he may have got his facts wrong about plans to kill Serbian leader Slododan Milosevic, in a plot that bore an “eerie similarity” to the crash that killed Diana and Dodi.
In 2001, Tomlinson had told Al Fayed he had seen an MI6 – the British Secret Intelligence Services – document detailing plans to murder Milosevic in a car crash by shining a bright light into a tunnel.
He claimed the alleged plan was one of several options set out as possible ways of killing Milosevic in the document, which he saw during his time working for the organisation around 1992.
He said the plot involved using a strobe gun to flash bight light into a tunnel while Milosevic was at a peace conference in Geneva. But he has now told the inquest at London’s High Court he may have got the details confused.
Giving evidence by a video link from France, he admitted the alleged plan may not have involved a bright light and that the intended target may not have been Milosevic.
The jury heard another witness – an unnamed MI6 agent – had admitted drawing up such a document but said Milosevic was not the target and that, in any case, the plan had been dismissed as “out of the question” by his MI6 superiors.
Tomlinson also told Al Fayed he believed Dodi and Diana’s driver, Henri Paul, who also died in the crash, was a paid-up member of the British intelligence services.
However, he told the inquest he had no evidence for his claims. Tomlinson, who was once jailed for leaking government secrets and was dismissed by MI6 in 1995, admitted he had no sense of loyalty to MI6 and he had previously wanted to cause the organisation embarrassment and difficulty.
Al Fayed has always claimed Diana and Dodi were murdered by the British establishment because they were about to announce their engagement and the princess was pregnant.
