Princess Diana would still be alive if she had accepted police protection, her inquest heard yesterday (17.01.08).
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Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Condon was “very concerned” when Diana – who was killed in a Paris car crash with her lover Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul in 1997 – refused Royal Protection in December 1993, a year after she split from husband Prince Charles.
He told the jury at London’s High Court: “Let me be absolutely frank. If as my wish, she would have had police protection in Paris, then I’m absolutely convinced those three lives would not have been tragically lost.
“Her problem with protection was, sadly, that she did not have police protection. I wish she had.”
Condon said he believed Diana – who asked police if her car had been fitted with her tracking device and her phone bugged during a meeting in 1994 – was suspicious of the police.
He added: “Clearly she had decided in her own mind, sadly, I think, that the police, if they were on anyone’s side, were not on her side.”
Later in proceedings, Michael Mansfield QC, who is representing Fayed’s father Mohamed al-Fayed, suggested Condon did not hand over a letter which described Diana’s fears she was going to be assassinated because “he knew something had gone wrong in Paris linked to the work of British state agencies”.
To which Condon – who passed on the note detailing a meeting between the princess and her lawyer Lord Mishcon to the royal coroner in 2003 – replied: “I find the suggestion – though I respect your right to raise it – as totally abhorrent, offensive and would actually mean that I’m a murderer in essence, part of a murderous conspiracy.”
Dodi’s father Mohamed believes his son and the princess were killed by British security services on the orders of Queen Elizabeth’s husband Prince Philip because they were about to announced their engagement and Diana was pregnant.
