By SUE REID, Daily Mail
Last updated at 10:57am on 17th June 2006
QUOTE
Astonishing claims by new witnesses are being examined by British detectives investigating Diana's death. They seem incredible. But if true, they could rock the Royal Family to its foundations.
On the night that Diana, Princess of Wales died, the lights of the British Embassy — less than a mile from the accident spot in Paris — blazed until dawn finally broke over the French capital.
Inside the imposing building, diplomats summoned from their sleep by the British ambassador, Sir Michael Jay, struggled to monitor the tragedy that was unfolding.
Millions of words have been written about the moment that Diana, with her Muslim boyfriend Dodi Fayed, smashed into pillar 13 of the Pont d’Alma road tunnel as they were being driven from the Ritz Hotel in a black Mercedes at 12.20am on Sunday, August 31, 1997.
Ever since, the precise chronology of the fateful night and the roles played by the Royal Family and the Government have been accepted almost without serious challenge.
Yet the Mail can reveal today that new eye-witnesses have emerged in the past few weeks with explosive testimony which raises profound questions about the influence of the House of Windsor and the Establishment over events surrounding the Princess’s death.
These fresh accounts include the astonishing claim that the Queen’s most senior and trusted courtier was seen in Paris, at the British Embassy, half an hour before the crash.
Furthermore, they include a baffling allegation that the RAF crew which flew Tony Blair from his Sedgefield constituency to London to greet the Princess’s repatriated body had been on continual standby to make the flight from two days earlier — when Diana was still alive.
During this investigation, the Mail has also received confirmation that two diplomats working for the secret intelligence service MI6 were operating at the British Embassy in Paris during the weeks before Diana’s death.
These two senior men — who have both enjoyed glittering careers — have admitted their intelligence roles to Lord Stevens, the ex-head of Scotland Yard who is heading the official inquiry into whether there was any conspiracy to murder the Princess.
In the Paris crash, Dodi was killed outright and the Princess was at first thought to have survived. Yet despite attempts by surgeons, she was declared beyond medical help at the Pitie Salpetriere hospital at 4am.
By then, dozens of phone calls had flashed between the British Embassy and Balmoral Castle, the royal retreat in Scotland where the Queen and Diana’s ex-husband, Prince Charles, were holidaying with Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12.
The Queen was the first to be told of the accident, at 2am, when she was woken by her personal page. Still in her dressing gown, she and Prince Philip anxiously paced the tartan-carpeted corridors throughout the night.
Alerted immediately, Prince Charles retired to his private sitting room next to the Queen’s dressing room. There, he made calls and answered those from Paris coming into the castle’s switchboard and his mobile phone.
On the ground floor of the castle, the Queen's deputy private secretary Sir Robin Janvrin based himself in the equerries' room, where he also fielded incoming messages.
Most pertinently, Sir Robin was on duty because his superior — the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, a plummy-voiced Old Etonian and Princess Diana's brother-in-law — had taken a weekend's leave.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, who was in his North-East constituency, is said to have been woken by a call from Sir Michael Jay which had been forwarded by a secure satellite phone via Downing Street.
At first, he was told the Princess had been involved in an accident and then, later, of her death. It was then he began working on that memorable — and apparently impromptu — speech which he delivered several hours later, describing Diana as the 'People's Princess'.
It was a fitting title and one that the millions mourning Diana embraced.
Yet just as the outpouring of grief continued in the days after the crash, so, too, have those nagging doubts — and conspiracy theories — about Diana’s death, which refuse to abate.
As a result, Lord Stevens’s team of ten detectives have interviewed hundreds of people whose lives crossed Diana’s own. Prince Charles has been questioned. Sir Michael Jay, now Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, has been asked to outline his role on the night of the crash.
In a dramatic development in recent weeks, Sir Robert Fellowes — now Lord Fellowes — has been asked about his whereabouts during that tragic weekend.
Significantly, the detectives are also planning to speak to Maud Morel-Coujard, the French legal official who oversaw the police operation on the night of the crash. Indeed, she was waiting at the hospital when Diana was brought there by ambulance just after 2am.
She is in a unique position to know exactly what happened and, crucially, her evidence may give credence to the allegations about Lord Fellowes, Mr Blair’s flight and the two spies.
Her recollections may also explain the feverish volume of communications between Paris, London and Scotland that night.
Mme Morel-Coujard is expected to say that some instructions on the treatment of the dying Princess were issued by Sir Michael Jay, who was also at the hospital. He was, in turn, receiving his orders via his mobile from the British Embassy, Balmoral and Downing Street.
Most contentiously, Mme Morel-Coujard will reveal that a decision to embalm Diana's body two hours before it was flown back to England was made by 'the British authorities'. (Indeed, French law explicitly bans the practice if a post-mortem examination is planned. This is because the preserving chemical formaldehyde corrupts toxicology tests, including those for pregnancy.)
Her revelations will stoke the controversy over why Diana’s body should have undergone this process prior to such a key forensic examination, which took place on the Sunday at 8pm at a West London mortuary.
Was it — as some continue to maintain, despite denials — because Diana was pregnant with Dodi’s baby? And did someone want such an embarrassing fact kept secret?
Recently, the notion of Diana being pregnant was vehemently discounted in the Mail on Sunday by Dominic Lawson, the husband of Diana's close friend Rosa Monckton.
He wrote: "It is in a way obscene that such speculation is the subject of a public inquiry (by Lord Stevens)."
He explained his wife had spent a week with Diana before her death and had told Lord Stevens's team that the Princess could not possibly have been pregnant with Dodi's baby.
He added: "Rosa felt obliged to reveal that, when they said goodbye on August 20, 1997, Diana's period had started and therefore it was biologically impossible for her to have been pregnant at the time of her death."
So what evidence has Lord Stevens's investigation uncovered so far? During his three-year inquiry — which has cost £2million — he has let slip little about his findings. But at a book festival last month, he admitted new witnesses had been found who may provide fresh clues.
He is now writing an interim report (it is expected to be finished by September) for the Royal coroner, Michael Burgess, who will hold an inquest next year once Lord Stevens has completed a final analysis that includes the testimony provided by the new eye-witnesses.
The Mail has learned they include two men with extraordinary tales. The first, whom we will call Mr X, was based at the British Embassy in Paris and formerly worked for the Foreign Office in London.
His tantalising evidence emerged only recently through a third party. If true, it will link the Royal Family to events in Paris on the weekend of the Princess’s death.
Mr X is said to be a middle-aged, English wireless operator at the embassy.
He came on duty in the early evening of August 30, expecting his night shift to be routine. From his office in the communications room, encrypted phone calls and messages were sent from the embassy via UK listening stations to Downing Street, the heads of Whitehall departments and, if necessary, senior aides of the Royal Family.
Mr X was proud of his job and is an ardent royalist. However, something unexpected happened that night which he found deeply troubling. He says that just before midnight (as Diana was preparing to leave the Ritz Hotel with Dodi) two well-spoken men burst through the door of the communications room. Described as "public school", they brusquely ordered Mr X to leave his post and not to return until told.
Mr X kept silent about this pertinent episode until 2000 because he had signed the Official Secrets Act.
But then, apparently, he named one of the men to a third party. Exploding with anger, he explained: "It was that b*****d Fellowes. He turfed me out of my own office. He was in Paris the night Diana died."
Of course, Mr X may have been mistaken. Well-spoken Englishmen in smart suits are apt to sound and look very similar. Furthermore, Mr X only saw the two men for a few minutes. But his story, however incredible, is being actively investigated by Lord Stevens and his team.
The Mail understands that in an initial conversation with the Diana squad, Lord Fellowes has said he was enjoying a break at his Norfolk estate with his wife — Diana's sister, Lady Jane Fellowes. He has dismissed the claim he was in Paris that weekend or any part of the night Diana died.
And what of the second new witness, whom we will call Mr Y? He has come forward with a scenario which, if true, will also shed doubt on the official version of Diana's death.
The Mail understands that he was interviewed at length by Lord Stevens's detectives recently. Mr Y was one of the security staff on duty at Tony Blair’s Sedgefield constituency during the weekend that Diana died.
It was one of the first weekends the Labour Prime Minister had spent there with his family since his election. When news arrived overnight that Diana was dead, Mr Blair's weekend, which had been largely free of public engagements, was thrown into disarray.
After delivering his 'People's Princess' tribute, he returned to London to receive Diana's body at Northolt airport at 5pm on the Sunday.
The Prime Minister's wife and their three children were put on a scheduled British Midland flight from Teesside airport at tea-time for them to return to Downing Street. Normally, the Prime Minister would have travelled with them.
But instead, he boarded an RAF plane piloted by a crew based in Scotland which had flown to Teesside. Waiting on the tarmac for Mr Blair was Mr Y.
Idly chatting to the co-pilot, he was told something very strange.
The co-pilot, according to information now with the Diana squad, asked him: "What’s really going on? We’ve been on standby in Scotland since 5pm on Friday waiting to make this flight to Northolt with the Prime Minister."
Incredibly, and if Mr Y’s memory of his conversation with the co-pilot is correct, it would mean that Diana's death was not only expected — it was actually planned.
Yet can that really be true? Or is it just another fantastic conspiracy theory, one of the countless that still surround the Princess's death?
Could Mr Y have perhaps misinterpreted the words of the RAF co-pilot? Or has his memory played tricks about events which happened almost a decade ago?
Mr Y's claim is just one of the many mysteries that are now being unravelled, checked and re-examined by the Diana squad.
Perhaps none of the unanswered questions is more puzzling than the roles of the two MI6 officers who were based at the British Embassy in Paris. Both were listed on the embassy's staff list as diplomats. Yet one had mysteriously only just been posted to the French capital a few days before the crash.
Their names first came to the attention of the Diana squad two years ago when a continuous stream of informants — including one of particular significance because of his position in Britain’s special forces — insisted that the pair were spies who were both implicated in the Princess's death.
Significantly, in one instance, the Diana squad was passed a nine-line note on a flimsy piece of paper purporting to come from an insider at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It has been seen by the Mail and names both men.
Then it adds: "If you are brave enough, dig deeper to learn about them. Both MI6. Both were involved at the highest level in the murder of the Princess."
The files at the Diana squad headquarters, of course, are stacked high with such wild allegations from shadowy informants. Many have a habit of being unprovable or are simply the imaginings of over-fertile minds.
However, the Mail has learned that both these men, in their mid-40s, have been interviewed by officers about their movements on the weekend the Princess died. They were given permission to speak about their roles for the first time by the head of MI6, John Scarlett.
The men have produced tickets and documents dating from 1997 which prove they were not in Paris that weekend. One was in the South of France with his wife and in-laws. The other was taking a short trip to Greece.
Both have told Lord Stevens they only returned to the British Embassy, overlooking the eternally fashionable Rue du Faubourg St Honore near the Champs Elysees, after Diana's body had left French soil for England.
That answer may not surprise Lord Stevens. But equally, it won't stop him looking into the matter further. From the start of his inquiry, he promised that his team would "go wherever the evidence takes us" in the quest for the truth about Diana's death.
And, if necessary, that includes the powerful inner sanctums of the British Establishment.
On the night that Diana, Princess of Wales died, the lights of the British Embassy — less than a mile from the accident spot in Paris — blazed until dawn finally broke over the French capital.
Inside the imposing building, diplomats summoned from their sleep by the British ambassador, Sir Michael Jay, struggled to monitor the tragedy that was unfolding.
Millions of words have been written about the moment that Diana, with her Muslim boyfriend Dodi Fayed, smashed into pillar 13 of the Pont d’Alma road tunnel as they were being driven from the Ritz Hotel in a black Mercedes at 12.20am on Sunday, August 31, 1997.
Ever since, the precise chronology of the fateful night and the roles played by the Royal Family and the Government have been accepted almost without serious challenge.
Yet the Mail can reveal today that new eye-witnesses have emerged in the past few weeks with explosive testimony which raises profound questions about the influence of the House of Windsor and the Establishment over events surrounding the Princess’s death.
These fresh accounts include the astonishing claim that the Queen’s most senior and trusted courtier was seen in Paris, at the British Embassy, half an hour before the crash.
Furthermore, they include a baffling allegation that the RAF crew which flew Tony Blair from his Sedgefield constituency to London to greet the Princess’s repatriated body had been on continual standby to make the flight from two days earlier — when Diana was still alive.
During this investigation, the Mail has also received confirmation that two diplomats working for the secret intelligence service MI6 were operating at the British Embassy in Paris during the weeks before Diana’s death.
These two senior men — who have both enjoyed glittering careers — have admitted their intelligence roles to Lord Stevens, the ex-head of Scotland Yard who is heading the official inquiry into whether there was any conspiracy to murder the Princess.
In the Paris crash, Dodi was killed outright and the Princess was at first thought to have survived. Yet despite attempts by surgeons, she was declared beyond medical help at the Pitie Salpetriere hospital at 4am.
By then, dozens of phone calls had flashed between the British Embassy and Balmoral Castle, the royal retreat in Scotland where the Queen and Diana’s ex-husband, Prince Charles, were holidaying with Princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12.
The Queen was the first to be told of the accident, at 2am, when she was woken by her personal page. Still in her dressing gown, she and Prince Philip anxiously paced the tartan-carpeted corridors throughout the night.
Alerted immediately, Prince Charles retired to his private sitting room next to the Queen’s dressing room. There, he made calls and answered those from Paris coming into the castle’s switchboard and his mobile phone.
On the ground floor of the castle, the Queen's deputy private secretary Sir Robin Janvrin based himself in the equerries' room, where he also fielded incoming messages.
Most pertinently, Sir Robin was on duty because his superior — the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, a plummy-voiced Old Etonian and Princess Diana's brother-in-law — had taken a weekend's leave.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, who was in his North-East constituency, is said to have been woken by a call from Sir Michael Jay which had been forwarded by a secure satellite phone via Downing Street.
At first, he was told the Princess had been involved in an accident and then, later, of her death. It was then he began working on that memorable — and apparently impromptu — speech which he delivered several hours later, describing Diana as the 'People's Princess'.
It was a fitting title and one that the millions mourning Diana embraced.
Yet just as the outpouring of grief continued in the days after the crash, so, too, have those nagging doubts — and conspiracy theories — about Diana’s death, which refuse to abate.
As a result, Lord Stevens’s team of ten detectives have interviewed hundreds of people whose lives crossed Diana’s own. Prince Charles has been questioned. Sir Michael Jay, now Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, has been asked to outline his role on the night of the crash.
In a dramatic development in recent weeks, Sir Robert Fellowes — now Lord Fellowes — has been asked about his whereabouts during that tragic weekend.
Significantly, the detectives are also planning to speak to Maud Morel-Coujard, the French legal official who oversaw the police operation on the night of the crash. Indeed, she was waiting at the hospital when Diana was brought there by ambulance just after 2am.
She is in a unique position to know exactly what happened and, crucially, her evidence may give credence to the allegations about Lord Fellowes, Mr Blair’s flight and the two spies.
Her recollections may also explain the feverish volume of communications between Paris, London and Scotland that night.
Mme Morel-Coujard is expected to say that some instructions on the treatment of the dying Princess were issued by Sir Michael Jay, who was also at the hospital. He was, in turn, receiving his orders via his mobile from the British Embassy, Balmoral and Downing Street.
Most contentiously, Mme Morel-Coujard will reveal that a decision to embalm Diana's body two hours before it was flown back to England was made by 'the British authorities'. (Indeed, French law explicitly bans the practice if a post-mortem examination is planned. This is because the preserving chemical formaldehyde corrupts toxicology tests, including those for pregnancy.)
Her revelations will stoke the controversy over why Diana’s body should have undergone this process prior to such a key forensic examination, which took place on the Sunday at 8pm at a West London mortuary.
Was it — as some continue to maintain, despite denials — because Diana was pregnant with Dodi’s baby? And did someone want such an embarrassing fact kept secret?
Recently, the notion of Diana being pregnant was vehemently discounted in the Mail on Sunday by Dominic Lawson, the husband of Diana's close friend Rosa Monckton.
He wrote: "It is in a way obscene that such speculation is the subject of a public inquiry (by Lord Stevens)."
He explained his wife had spent a week with Diana before her death and had told Lord Stevens's team that the Princess could not possibly have been pregnant with Dodi's baby.
He added: "Rosa felt obliged to reveal that, when they said goodbye on August 20, 1997, Diana's period had started and therefore it was biologically impossible for her to have been pregnant at the time of her death."
So what evidence has Lord Stevens's investigation uncovered so far? During his three-year inquiry — which has cost £2million — he has let slip little about his findings. But at a book festival last month, he admitted new witnesses had been found who may provide fresh clues.
He is now writing an interim report (it is expected to be finished by September) for the Royal coroner, Michael Burgess, who will hold an inquest next year once Lord Stevens has completed a final analysis that includes the testimony provided by the new eye-witnesses.
The Mail has learned they include two men with extraordinary tales. The first, whom we will call Mr X, was based at the British Embassy in Paris and formerly worked for the Foreign Office in London.
His tantalising evidence emerged only recently through a third party. If true, it will link the Royal Family to events in Paris on the weekend of the Princess’s death.
Mr X is said to be a middle-aged, English wireless operator at the embassy.
He came on duty in the early evening of August 30, expecting his night shift to be routine. From his office in the communications room, encrypted phone calls and messages were sent from the embassy via UK listening stations to Downing Street, the heads of Whitehall departments and, if necessary, senior aides of the Royal Family.
Mr X was proud of his job and is an ardent royalist. However, something unexpected happened that night which he found deeply troubling. He says that just before midnight (as Diana was preparing to leave the Ritz Hotel with Dodi) two well-spoken men burst through the door of the communications room. Described as "public school", they brusquely ordered Mr X to leave his post and not to return until told.
Mr X kept silent about this pertinent episode until 2000 because he had signed the Official Secrets Act.
But then, apparently, he named one of the men to a third party. Exploding with anger, he explained: "It was that b*****d Fellowes. He turfed me out of my own office. He was in Paris the night Diana died."
Of course, Mr X may have been mistaken. Well-spoken Englishmen in smart suits are apt to sound and look very similar. Furthermore, Mr X only saw the two men for a few minutes. But his story, however incredible, is being actively investigated by Lord Stevens and his team.
The Mail understands that in an initial conversation with the Diana squad, Lord Fellowes has said he was enjoying a break at his Norfolk estate with his wife — Diana's sister, Lady Jane Fellowes. He has dismissed the claim he was in Paris that weekend or any part of the night Diana died.
And what of the second new witness, whom we will call Mr Y? He has come forward with a scenario which, if true, will also shed doubt on the official version of Diana's death.
The Mail understands that he was interviewed at length by Lord Stevens's detectives recently. Mr Y was one of the security staff on duty at Tony Blair’s Sedgefield constituency during the weekend that Diana died.
It was one of the first weekends the Labour Prime Minister had spent there with his family since his election. When news arrived overnight that Diana was dead, Mr Blair's weekend, which had been largely free of public engagements, was thrown into disarray.
After delivering his 'People's Princess' tribute, he returned to London to receive Diana's body at Northolt airport at 5pm on the Sunday.
The Prime Minister's wife and their three children were put on a scheduled British Midland flight from Teesside airport at tea-time for them to return to Downing Street. Normally, the Prime Minister would have travelled with them.
But instead, he boarded an RAF plane piloted by a crew based in Scotland which had flown to Teesside. Waiting on the tarmac for Mr Blair was Mr Y.
Idly chatting to the co-pilot, he was told something very strange.
The co-pilot, according to information now with the Diana squad, asked him: "What’s really going on? We’ve been on standby in Scotland since 5pm on Friday waiting to make this flight to Northolt with the Prime Minister."
Incredibly, and if Mr Y’s memory of his conversation with the co-pilot is correct, it would mean that Diana's death was not only expected — it was actually planned.
Yet can that really be true? Or is it just another fantastic conspiracy theory, one of the countless that still surround the Princess's death?
Could Mr Y have perhaps misinterpreted the words of the RAF co-pilot? Or has his memory played tricks about events which happened almost a decade ago?
Mr Y's claim is just one of the many mysteries that are now being unravelled, checked and re-examined by the Diana squad.
Perhaps none of the unanswered questions is more puzzling than the roles of the two MI6 officers who were based at the British Embassy in Paris. Both were listed on the embassy's staff list as diplomats. Yet one had mysteriously only just been posted to the French capital a few days before the crash.
Their names first came to the attention of the Diana squad two years ago when a continuous stream of informants — including one of particular significance because of his position in Britain’s special forces — insisted that the pair were spies who were both implicated in the Princess's death.
Significantly, in one instance, the Diana squad was passed a nine-line note on a flimsy piece of paper purporting to come from an insider at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It has been seen by the Mail and names both men.
Then it adds: "If you are brave enough, dig deeper to learn about them. Both MI6. Both were involved at the highest level in the murder of the Princess."
The files at the Diana squad headquarters, of course, are stacked high with such wild allegations from shadowy informants. Many have a habit of being unprovable or are simply the imaginings of over-fertile minds.
However, the Mail has learned that both these men, in their mid-40s, have been interviewed by officers about their movements on the weekend the Princess died. They were given permission to speak about their roles for the first time by the head of MI6, John Scarlett.
The men have produced tickets and documents dating from 1997 which prove they were not in Paris that weekend. One was in the South of France with his wife and in-laws. The other was taking a short trip to Greece.
Both have told Lord Stevens they only returned to the British Embassy, overlooking the eternally fashionable Rue du Faubourg St Honore near the Champs Elysees, after Diana's body had left French soil for England.
That answer may not surprise Lord Stevens. But equally, it won't stop him looking into the matter further. From the start of his inquiry, he promised that his team would "go wherever the evidence takes us" in the quest for the truth about Diana's death.
And, if necessary, that includes the powerful inner sanctums of the British Establishment.