Mohamed Al Fayed, the man who claims British Queen Elizabeth II's husband ordered spies to kill his son and Princess Diana, was to take the stand at a coroner's inquest yesterday.
Al Fayed was to get the most public airing for his theories yet in what is expected to be a high point in the inquest that has run for more than four months and cost more than ?2 million (US$3.9 million).
Al Fayed drew his own conclusions within half an hour of his son Dodi's death, said Frank Klein, president of the Ritz Hotel in Paris.
"This is not an accident, this is a plot or an assassination," Fayed said in a telephone conversation, Klein has testified.
"I am in no doubt whatsoever that my son and Princess Diana were murdered by the British security services on the orders of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh," Al Fayed said in a witness statement three years ago.
He has also declared: "I'm the only person who knows exactly what happened."
On Thursday, however, Al Fayed's security chief, John Macnamara, said Al Fayed had no evidence implicating Prince Philip.
Macnamara also said he had no evidence for previous assertions that Diana had telephoned friends with news of an impending engagement, that the British ambassador in Paris ordered her body embalmed to cover up her pregnancy or that the French medical team that treated the dying princess were involved in a murder plot -- all allegations made by his boss.
That's unlikely to dent the confidence of the combative Al Fayed, who worked his way up from a humble birth in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1929 to become one of the richest men in Britain.
Stubbornly rejecting the findings of French and British police that his son died in a simple road accident, he has pursued British, French and US court cases seeking evidence of collusion among security agencies.
Despite owning the Harrods department store in west London, a castle in Scotland and the Fulham FC soccer team, Al Fayed has been a frustrated outsider in his adopted country.
He has been thwarted in his applications for British citizenship and caused a political uproar in 1994 when he disclosed that he had paid two members of the House of Commons to put questions to ministers.
Al Fayed began building his fortune as a furniture dealer and had profitable dealings with his brother-in-law, Adnan Khashoggi, who later became an arms trader.
Al Fayed and his son Dodi, the product of a brief first marriage, moved to England in 1974.
Al Fayed defeated another colorful entrepreneur, Tiny Rowland, to gain control of Harrods in 1985. Five years later, a British government report concluded that Al Fayed and his brother Ali had misrepresented their background and the sources of their wealth when they bought Harrods, but no sanctions were imposed.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
RSS