Life, the Universe and Everything

Eleven years after the crash and on the 94th day of the coroner’s inquest - which cost British taxpayers an estimated £3m - the jury yesterday returned a 9-2 majority verdict that Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed by their driver, Henri Paul, and the chasing paparazzi. In other news; water is wet, beer makes you drunk and the Pope admits that he is Catholic.

Mohamed al Fayed had demanded an inquest in front of a jury and said that he would accept their judgement: he did not. Today’s Guardian quotes Fayed as muttering as he left court: “The most important thing is it’s murder.” Fayed’s spokeswoman, Katherine Witty, went one better. Witty is quoted in the same paper with suggesting that the following vehicles contained Fayed’s elusive conspirators: “The jury have found that it wasn’t just the paparazzi that caused the crash, but identified following vehicles. Who they are and what they were doing in Paris is still a mystery.”

I will try to clear up Witty’s little mystery for her, even though I have absolutely no evidence to back this up; after all, it never stopped her boss. The vehicles following the Mercedes contained paparazzi photographers that were in Paris to take a photograph of Diana and Dodi to sell to gossip magazines and the red tops.

I am not normally the kind of person to say that I told you so, but just look at the entry I posted way back on the 16th December of last year. Just in case you cannot be bothered, this is my prediction of the immediate aftermath of the conclusion of the inquest: “When the jury return its verdict, a spokesperson will state something along the lines of it being ‘a sorry day for British justice that murderers can go unpunished because of a cover-up by the establishment.’”

Fayed lost his son in this crash. We now know - as most sane people knew eleven years ago - that this was because a drunk driver was driving too quickly whilst pursued by the paparazzi. His grief was understandable. His conspiracy theory - which seemed to involve the whole of Britain and France to some degree - was farcical from the very start. To continue such claims were ridiculous: he had not one scrap of evidence to back up his theory. A British court has now judged the case and found that there was never any conspiracy.

Fayed must now accept that verdict - he does not have to like it - and refrain from making his ridiculous, slanderous even, accusations. There was never a conspiracy, just a father grief stricken at the loss of his son looking for somebody to blame. Henri Paul was also killed in the crash so it is understandable that Fayed looked for somebody else on whom he could direct his anger. In selecting the British establishment - in particular, the Duke of Edinburgh - he has created one huge joke that has cost £3m of our money. Had he directed his anger at the actual guilty party - the paparazzi - maybe he could have achieved something approaching closure. Had he demanded that laws and restrictions be put in place governing how our newspapers and magazines can gather their photographs, we could have ended up with a situation where tabloids have to put news on their front pages once more.