How the Diana conspiracies live on

Diana, Princess of Wales, died on 31 August 1997 after the car she was travelling in crashed in a tunnel at the Pont d'Alma in Paris. Also killed in the accident was Dodi Fayed, Diana's boyfriend and the son of Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed.

Since the accident, Mohammed al-Fayed has been energetic in pointing to suspicious elements surrounding the accident and in suggesting that the real reasons for the couple's death have been deliberately concealed.

What is interesting is that al-Fayed's allegations have gained such an easy foothold in the popular consciousness, despite the fact that there are alternative, straightforward explanations for most of the incidents that al-Fayed has cast doubt over.

The problem, as Diana's close friend Rosa Monckton has observed, is that "she was such an extraordinary woman that people find it very hard to accept that she could have died such an ordinary death."

Al-Fayed's claims hinge on his assertion of the depth of Diana's relationship with Dodi.

He believes that the British establishment, and specifically Prince Philip and MI6, could not accept the prospect that Princes William and Harry, heirs to the British throne, might have a Muslim, Egyptian-born stepfather.

The Harrods owner is on record as claiming that his son informed him on the Saturday evening before the accident, at the Ritz hotel in Paris, that the couple were about to declare their engagement.

He has also implied that Diana and Dodi had plans to live together at the Villa Windsor, the former Paris home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Most interestingly, al-Fayed has suggested that Diana was pregnant at the time of her death - a claim given credence to by a photo taken earlier in the summer of 1997 which appeared to show a possible bump on her stomach.

Interviewed on American TV in 2003, he said that Dodi had confirmed to him "definitely" that she was pregnant. On another US TV programme in the same year al-Fayed claimed that Diana had told him that she was expecting.

This became the spur, it is suggested, for an establishment conspiracy to murder Diana and Dodi. The conspiracy theory focuses on several incidents surrounding the Alma Bridge accident.

Henri Paul

The deputy head of security at the Paris Ritz was driving the Mercedes when it crashed at high speed early in the morning of 31 August 1997. French blood tests concluded he was more than three times over the drink-drive limit.

However, al-Fayed has alleged that Henri-Paul's blood sample was changed with that of someone else in order to validate the conclusion that the accident was caused by drink-driving. Jean-Claude Mules, who led the French police investigation into the crash, says it would have been impossible to swap the blood.

MI6

There have been eye-witness claims of a white flash in the tunnel just before the crash. Former MI6 man Richard Tomlinson has stated on US TV that British special forces have used this flashgun technique to blind adversaries before attacking them.

Tomlinson also claimed that an MI6 plan to assassinate the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic involved causing a car crash in a tunnel.

White Fiat Uno

Two witnesses say they saw a white Fiat Uno leaving the Alma Bridge tunnel after the accident. Fiat paint marks were subsequently found on the wrecked Mercedes.

The inability of the French authorities to track down the Fiat undoubtedly harmed the reputation of the French investigation and added weight to the conspiracy theories.

But crash experts have concluded that there was no major collision between the Fiat and the Mercedes, and that the cars merely brushed each other.

Delay between crash and hospital

Two ambulances arrived on the scene six minutes after the accident. Why, then, did it take nearly one and three-quarter hours to transport Diana to a hospital less than four miles away, and in the middle of the night?

The explanation is that, in contrast to practice in the UK where victims are raced to hospital, French policy is to treat patients in state of the art ambulances. What is more, Diana was taken to the hospital best prepared to treat her condition, not the hospital nearest to the Alma Bridge.

And Diana had suffered a heart attack in the aftermath of the crash, as a result of which she encountered blood pressure problems which forced her ambulance to travel at very slow speed.

Why was the tunnel reopened so quickly?

Conspiracy theorists allege the decision to reopen the tunnel quickly meant that significant evidence was either lost or compromised.

Jean-Claude Mules has countered that "There was no reason, once the Mercedes had been taken away, to block the scene." British crash expert Dr Murray Mackay agrees: "I can't think there is anything more that would have been achieved if they had kept the tunnel closed for another 24 hours."

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