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Diana inquest will go on despite accusations of farce, says coroner

The long-running inquests of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed will continue despite calls for them to be brought to a close, the coroner announced yesterday.<br/> <br/> Lord Justice Scott Baker, addressing the 76th day of hearings that began in October, also issued a warning that anyone commenting on the value or otherwise of the inquests could be in contempt of court.<br/> <br/> As reported exclusively in <i>The Times</i> yesterday a number of senior peers and MPs have voiced their concern that the proceedings have descended into a circus, particularly after Monday’s performance in the witness box by Mohamed Al Fayed, who believes that the deaths were the result of a conspiracy headed by the Duke of Edinburgh.<br/> <br/> “These inquests, which are an inquiry into two deaths, are being heard by a jury following the decision of the Divisional Court, and they will continue to be heard by the jury, which in due course will return its verdicts,” the coroner told the hearings in the presence of the jury.<br/> <br/> “I remind everyone, as I have before, that the jury decides the case on the evidence it hears in court and on nothing else. Comments that are made outside the court, often about a limited aspect of the evidence, may render the maker or publisher liable to contempt of court. I again urge great care that nothing is said, written or published that may influence the jury.”<br/> <br/> Michael Mansfield, QC, representing Mr Al Fayed, reminded the court that his client was not the only person to believe in a conspiracy; as the court has heard, the Princess herself imagined that her life was in danger from her enemies, including possibly other members of the Royal Family.<br/> <br/> Calls for the inquests to be wound up were prompted by the disclosure that ten past and present MI6 officers will be called to give evidence over a claim in a book by Richard Tomlinson, a renegade Special Intelligence Service officer, that he had seen a proposal to kill Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian leader, by blinding his driver in a Geneva tunnel. Mr Al Fayed’s lawyers have suggested that the plan had similarities with the accident that killed the Princess and Mr Fayed.<br/> <br/> Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, told the hearings that the plan did not concern Milosevic, and had been so out of step with MI6 practice and ethos that it was abandoned.<br/> <br/> Speaking by video link from Paris yesterday the widow of James Andanson, a French photographer who owned a Fiat Uno, said that it was impossible that her husband could have made the 2½hour journey in the middle of the night from their home in Lignières, taking the family golden labrador with him, to be in the Alma tunnel in Paris at the moment of the fatal crash.<br/> <br/> Witnesses have spoken of a white Fiat in the underpass at the time of the collision, with a dog in the back, but French police ruled out Mr Andanson. His death, apparently by suicide, three years later, has not been explained.

Full post as published by International and UK Law on February 21, 2008 (boomark / email).