London: United States intelligence was eavesdropping on Princess Diana's telephone calls on the night she died in a car crash in Paris, while keeping British secret agency in the dark, a British newspaper claimed on Sunday citing findings of a to-be-released report.
Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service had bugged Diana's calls as she stayed at the Ritz hotel, but failed to notify Mi6, the British Intelligence Agency, The Observer reported.
Stevens is understood to have been assured that the 39 classified documents detailing Diana's final conversations did not reveal anything sinister or contain material that might help explain her death. Scotland Yard's inquiry, to be published on Thursday, also throws up further intelligence links with the Princess of Wales on the night she died. The driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, was in the pay of the French equivalent of Mi5.
Stevens traced £100,000 he had amassed in 14 French bank accounts though no payments have been linked to Diana's death. Stevens's conclusion is that Diana, her companion Dodi Fayed, and Paul died in an accident caused by Paul driving too fast through the Pont de l'Alma underpass in Paris while under the influence of alcohol.
The car was being pursued by photographers at the time. Tests confirmed that Paul was more than three times over the French drink-drive limit and was travelling at 'excessive' speed. The inquiry will quash a number of conspiracy theories that have circulated since August 31, 1997, among them that Diana was pregnant.
It found no evidence that the princess was planning to get engaged to Dodi, son of Mohamed Fayed who owns the Harrods' department store. The Harrods tycoon believes that Paul's blood samples were swapped to portray him as a drunk in an elaborate cover-up by the establishment to stop Diana marrying Dodi, a Muslim.
According to the report, Stevens is expected to concede that while there was a mix-up it was an accident and that the original French post-mortem which found that Paul was three times over the French drink-drive limit was correct.
The inquiry will support the findings of the original French accident inquiry in criticizing the paparazzi as a possible reason for encouraging Paul to speed. The 'brightlight' theory - the claim that the driver was deliberately blinded by a beam immediately before the crash -- is also dismissed by Stevens, the report said.
Comments
0 comment