Princess Diana’s former bodyguard has slammed claims he was part of a murder cover-up.
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Trevor Rees – the only survivor of the Paris car crash which killed Diana, her lover Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul on August 31, 1997 – told the inquest into the princess’ death that he had only ever told the truth and insisted he was not part of a conspiracy theory.
Rees – who only has a vague memory of that night – said yesterday (23.01.08): “I am not part of a conspiracy to suppress the truth at all. All I have ever done is given the truth as I see it.”
Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has always maintained Diana and Dodi were killed by the British establishment because they were about to announce their engagement and the princess was pregnant. He has previously accused Rees of faking memory loss and being paid to tell lies.
Yesterday, Lord Justice Scott Baker – the coroner hearing the inquest – criticised Al Fayed for not withdrawing those allegations before the trial.
Speaking on behalf of his client, Al Fayed’s lawyer Michael Mansfield said: “I have not maintained those allegations, and I am not in a position to produce any material to support them.”
Lord Baker then asked: “Why haven’t they been withdrawn? One would have thought that a man of any decency would have withdrawn.”
Mansfield said Al Fayed’s position would become clear when he testifies. The lawyer added: “Relatives of dead people often do have very firm beliefs as to what has happened.”
Al Fayed has said that Rees’ book, The Bodyguard’s Story, published in 2000, was a “tissue of lies and deceit designed to denigrate me and to support the British authorities’ account that the deaths of my son and Princess Diana were the result of a simple traffic accident.”
In a letter to British investigators in 2006, Al Fayed said Rees, formerly a member of Al Fayed’s security staff, “knows the detail which the security services are so eager to suppress.”
