A Conspiracy Against Diana?

The list of participants in Al Fayed's conspiracy plot was vast, and included the British ambassador in Paris, the British and French intelligence services, the French police and ambulance services and even Diana's sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale. He challenged any of them to sue him for libel if they disputed his claims. "I am available," he told the court. "I am talking my mind. I am talking the truth. Because I am talking the truth, they cannot do it because they would get themselves in trouble."

Before the accident, Al Fayed claimed, he had good relations with the royal family. "I am invited, I sit next to the queen," he testified. "I am sponsoring for 20 million pounds for 20 years the Royal Horse Show. Prince Philip comes to Harrods, shopping, have lunch once or twice with me. In the evening, during the horse show, I open dinner for him, and all his Nazi relations come over for dinner." But the plot put an end to all that. "When they step on my foot and murder my son, I am not accepting that," Al Fayed testified. "I will go to God, to anywhere in the sky, to the end of the world."

Room 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice isn't exactly the end of the world, but it has been a long journey to the witness stand. The inquest, which as of last month has cost British taxpayers nearly $4.5 million, is the continuation of the original coroner's inquest started in 2004. In an ordinary death the process would have begun much earlier and been much quieter, but this inquest had to wait for the conclusion of judicial investigations into the deaths by French authorities in 1997 and late 2003. Then, not long after it started, the inquest was halted while officials awaited the results of a report by the former head of London's Metropolitan Police, published in 2006. That report—like the others—dismissed all conspiracy claims and said that Diana and Dodi died because their chauffeur, Henri Paul, was drunk (tests showed a blood-alcohol level more than three times the limit under French law) and drove too fast in an effort to outrun paparazzi. (The report also said that if Diana had been wearing a seatbelt she might have survived.)

The current inquest was restarted again late last year, and jurors—who will ultimately make a ruling on the cause of the deaths—have heard from about 150 witnesses, including Diana's closest friends, members of her personal staff and even Paris ambulance workers. Al Fayed pushed for it to be held in public, but that apparently has not satisfied him.

Testimony that contradicted his own was "baloney," Al Fayed said. He testified that Diana herself told him her life was in danger: "She told me she knew Prince Philip/Prince Charles want to get rid of her." The proof was contained in a wooden box with her initials on it, Al Fayed said. He claimed that Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, and her sister, Lady Sarah, are part of a cover-up to keep that proof hidden. Henri Paul was not drunk, Al Fayed testified. "It is proved black and white that the blood taken was not Henri Paul's blood," he said. "The blood had been taken from somebody in the mortuary who had been breathing carbon monoxide by the two pathologists who refused to appear because they know that their argument is false and baloney." Other inquiries have found no evidence of tampering.

Al Fayed was particularly dismissive of evidence that Diana was not pregnant. He claimed to have had a close relationship with the princess because he has been friends with her father, the late Earl Spencer, and his wife, Diana's stepmother. He invited her to come on holiday with him and Dodi even though Dodi at the time had a girlfriend, whom Al Fayed described as a "hooker" and a "gold-digger." He said that after falling in love aboard the Al Fayed family yacht, Dodi bought Diana a ring from the jeweler Repossi. "Repossi say this ring is from the collection 'Dis-Moi Oui'," an engagement ring line, he testified. He claimed that British intelligence had been bugging the couple, and when they heard about the ring they moved in for the kill.