Hearing transcripts

1 April 2008 - Afternoon session

3 (1.32 pm)

4 (Jury present)
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Members of the jury, I am happy
6 to say that the problem has been resolved and there is
7 nothing to be concerned about, so we can proceed.
8 I turn next to the toxicological evidence and, for
9 these purposes, it would be helpful for you to have
10 the bundle of 88 documents available because I shall be
11 making some references to it.
12 The approach I shall adopt will be to summarise
13 the history of the sampling and testing and, as I do so,
14 to point out some of the criticisms that have been made.
15 I shall start by reference to the evidence of
16 Professor Forrest because, as the first witness on the
17 topic, a lot of ground was covered through him.
18 You will remember that the exercise was conducted
19 with the benefit of the now 88-page bundle of documents
20 that you were provided with and you have and, in
21 addition, with the two-page results summary sheet that
22 comes from the Paget Report. Everyone agrees that that
23 may be a useful reference document, but it makes
24 assumptions, for example that samples came from
25 Henri Paul when you know that that is very much in

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1 issue. So you must bear in mind the limitations of
2 the summary document when you are referring to it.
3 It might just be helpful to put the summary document
4 up briefly on the screen so that we all know what we are
5 looking at [INQ0001744].
6 As you know, the collection of samples began after
7 the body of Henri Paul was taken from the crash scene to
8 the IML. On 31st August 1997, Professor Lecomte was
9 instructed to carry out a post-mortem examination on
10 the body of Henri Paul "... and to take samples of blood
11 and, if necessary, of the internal organs, in two
12 identical batches". You will find that at page 2 in
13 the bundle. It is the second-last paragraph on page 2,
14 the last clause in the line, "... to take samples of
15 blood and, if necessary, of the internal organs, in two
16 identical batches".
17 The report says that the body is 2147. Although
18 Major Mules, the police officer originally reported
19 Henri Paul as 2146 and Dodi as 2147, he corrected that
20 and it is not disputed that photographs showed
21 Henri Paul wearing an identification mark of 2147. But
22 right from the start there is an indication of lack of
23 care at the very least.
24 There are then discrepancies between the various
25 recordings of Henri Paul's height and weight, and her

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1 report goes on to detail the injuries sustained by him
2 in the crash. At pages 13, 13A, 14 and 14A, you have
3 what purport to be lists of the samples taken on
4 31st August 1997, but again there are differences
5 between the two documents.
6 In addition, five samples of blood are said to have
7 been taken and, if that is right, there is no saying
8 whatever happened to two of them. Documentation in
9 the French dossier only relates to three samples said to
10 be from this examination.
11 Where did those samples come from? On
12 9th September 1997, Professor Lecomte wrote that
13 the blood came from the left hemithorax area,
14 ie the left side of the chest. If you turn to page 15
15 of the bundle, in the middle of that large paragraph,
16 she says:
17 "As a result, the left-hand side of the heart was
18 exsanguinated and the heart only yielded a few drops of
19 blood, which were insufficient for conducting proper
20 tests. In total five bottles of blood were taken from
21 the same area, ie the area of the left hemithorax."
22 So there she was saying that there was insufficient
23 blood in the heart to provide what would be needed to
24 conduct proper tests.
25 However, much later, on 9th March 2005, she told

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1 Metropolitan Police officers that the blood had come
2 from the heart, using a clean scoop. You heard that
3 although heart blood is not what you want for testing
4 purposes and not as good as peripheral blood from
5 the femoral region, it is better than chest cavity blood
6 which can be contaminated.
7 You saw photographs of the sample bottles, including
8 one which had printed on it the French for "heart
9 blood", although, as you know, on 9th September 1997,
10 very soon after the examination, Lecomte was saying that
11 the blood had come from the chest area and not the heart
12 because there was not enough there.
13 You know too that, very recently, Professor Shepherd
14 carefully examined the photographs which had been taken
15 in the autopsy room and he saw what looked like blood in
16 sample bottles, before the chest had been opened but
17 after an incision had been made to Henri Paul's neck.
18 So was blood taken from that location? Lecomte has not
19 said anything about that. If blood was taken from
20 the neck area, was it discarded when blood became
21 available from the chest cavity? Again, Lecomte has not
22 said anything about that.
23 All these are the sort of questions that it would
24 have been very helpful to have been able to ask
25 Professor Lecomte about, but we have not been able to do

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1 that.
2 The first analysis was carried out by
3 Professor Ricordel. His report begins at page 16. If
4 you turn to page 16, you will see "Toxicology report,
5 Ivan Ricordel". He sets out how the sample bottle was
6 labelled and reports a blood/alcohol level of 1.87. In
7 this country that would translate as 187 and the legal
8 limit is 80, so something in excess of twice the legal
9 limit for driving in this country. You will find that
10 at page 19, the very bottom of page 9 on the right-hand
11 side, 1.87 grams per litre.
12 There is a degree of imprecision in the analysis,
13 and here the practice would be to reduce the figure by
14 6 per cent for safety's sake. It would be reported as
15 "not less than 176", said Professor Forrest.
16 Ricordel's results were challenged on behalf of
17 Mr Al Fayed, and so it was that Dr Pepin was instructed
18 to carry out an analysis as a cross-check. At page 24,
19 you have Dr Pepin's report of this analysis. It is
20 dated 1st September 1997. At page 25, he says he
21 received a glass flask marked with the name
22 "Henri Paul", IML number 2147, a date of 31/8/1997, name
23 "Professor Lecomte".
24 The result of the analysis for alcohol is reported
25 as 1.74, or 174 as it would be said in this country, but

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1 again it would be less 6 per cent if it were reported
2 here.
3 You will see on page 25, towards the top left-hand
4 side of the page, the reference to "one standard glass
5 flask of blood" and then, right down, just above two
6 paragraphs from the bottom:
7 "This analysis produced the following result in
8 Henri Paul: ethanol [that is alcohol] equals 1.74 grams
9 per litre."
10 Professor Forrest commented upon the obvious
11 difference between the two results, 187 and 174. He
12 said that this degree of variation between different
13 laboratories or even in the same laboratory on the same
14 sample was not untoward. One further point to remind
15 you of at this stage: on 4th September, Dr Pepin did
16 further tests on another sample said to have come from
17 Henri Paul on 31st August. He did a qualitative test
18 which showed the presence of alcohol, but not
19 a quantitative one, which would have shown the level of
20 alcohol. He also tested for other things and found
21 carbon monoxide, which I shall come to later.
22 He wrote a report on 9th September and, when he
23 dealt with this test, he carried over the 1.74 alcohol
24 result from the earlier test, without making it clear,
25 as he should have done, that this was not from a further

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1 analysis.
2 The next development was that Judge Stephan,
3 the examining magistrate, went to the IML himself, he
4 says on 4th September 1997. You have this at pages 38
5 and 39. At 38, you see "Official report of visit", and
6 then it says:
7 "At 17.00 on 4th September 1997, I,
8 Herve Stephan ...", et cetera.
9 You will remember that a police officer who attended
10 gave the date as 5th September. You may think that this
11 is simply another example of the carelessness that
12 we have seen so many times before. You may think that
13 if what was going on was a conspiracy to manufacture
14 false results, then perhaps those individuals would have
15 taken rather more care over the documentation than they
16 seem to have done.
17 According to Judge Stephan, Dr Campana took a blood
18 sample from the right femoral artery, seal number 1, and
19 from the left femoral artery, seal number 2, identified
20 by IML labels 972147. Exhibits 2 and 3 (3 was a sample
21 of muscle tissue) were said to have been handed over
22 immediately to Dr Pepin.
23 Just looking at page 39, we see, at the top of the
24 page, the first two lines:
25 "Dr Campana then took a blood sample from the right

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1 femoral artery and, after that, from the left femoral
2 artery, making up two vials identified by IML labels as
3 number 972147."
4 At the bottom of the page, a couple of lines up:
5 "Sealed exhibits 2 and 3 were handed over
6 immediately to Dr Pepin."
7 According to Dr Pepin's report, which starts at
8 page 40, he went to the IML on 4th September 1997 --
9 we see this at page 43, top line -- and witnessed
10 the taking of samples from Henri Paul. He refers to
11 the sample of left femoral blood, under the heading of
12 "Seal number 2". You see, on page 43, "Seal number 2"
13 in about the middle of the page and then "Sample of left
14 femoral blood", and then the photographs are on pages 43
15 and 44.
16 It appears to be agreed that what we have called
17 "pre-analytical issues", that is what happens before any
18 analysis, appear to have been handled much more
19 satisfactorily in respect of the blood from
20 4th September 1997 than was the case with the blood
21 samples from 31st August. Those samples were apparently
22 taken from Henri Paul in the presence of the judge and
23 Dr Pepin and given straight to Dr Pepin for analysis.
24 Members of the jury, it is entirely a matter for
25 you, but you may want to see whether, and if so to what

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1 extent, the results from 31st August and 4th September
2 support each other, and you may want to consider
3 whether, if there is any doubt about the results from
4 31st August, it is not safer to concentrate on
5 4th September.
6 Mr Keen would say that if there is doubt about
7 31st August, then you cannot rely safely upon anything
8 Dr Pepin was involved with, and you will want to
9 consider whether that is right or whether, against the
10 background of all the evidence on this topic, what
11 I shall call "4th September 1997" is actually of value.
12 Turning to the results of the analysis, Dr Pepin
13 reported the presence of Fluoxetine and Norfluoxetine,
14 which came from Prozac, as had been prescribed for
15 Mr Paul, and for Tiapride, which he had also been
16 prescribed. Fluoxetine and Norfluoxetine are products
17 of Prozac, so you can, I think, for practical purposes,
18 when you look at Fluoxetine or Norfluoxetine, mentally
19 write in "Prozac" at that point.
20 It is said that Prozac is very common. Tiapride,
21 no one could really help about that. But the
22 combination was found consistent with Henri Paul's
23 prescriptions. With the exception of Dr Melo, who
24 prescribed the medication and who knew what Henri Paul
25 was reporting to her, no one who knew him seems to have

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1 noticed anything about his behaviour which might have
2 called for an anti-depressant or something to deal with
3 anxiety, which is what Tiapride does. But she plainly
4 thought it appropriate to prescribe them, as well as
5 Aotal, otherwise known as Acamprosate, because, as
6 I have mentioned, he said he was worried that he was
7 becoming dependent upon alcohol and on occasions he
8 would drink at home and outside a social context.
9 The picture he appeared to be giving her was one of
10 drinking on his own. If that is a fair comment -- and
11 it is for you to say -- had he managed to keep secret
12 problems with alcohol and depression?
13 Anyway, Dr Pepin found what I shall call traces of
14 Prozac and Tiapride, but he did not find any signs of
15 Aotal, otherwise known as Acamprosatate. Is that
16 because Henri Paul was not, at this time, abstinent from
17 alcohol and trying to keep off it and so was not taking
18 Aotal? You do know that he had two double Ricards,
19 Ricard being slightly stronger than whisky, while he was
20 back on duty at the Ritz. Then, again, an empty Aotal
21 packet was found in the bin in his office at the Ritz.
22 Does that mean he must just have taken some, and so, if
23 these were his samples, they would have traces of
24 [Aotal] in them? Or is there no saying when the packet
25 was emptied and does his consumption of the Ricard tend

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1 to suggest that he would not have been taking something
2 for alcohol abstinence at this time? That is perhaps
3 something for you to use your common sense about.
4 At page 50, you can see that Dr Pepin reported an
5 alcohol level of 1.75 in blood. You find that at
6 the very, very bottom line in the page, "Ethanol equals
7 1.75 grams per litre".
8 Although the pre-analytical issues are said to have
9 been better handled as far as 4th September is
10 concerned, an issue immediately arises as far as the
11 analysis itself is concerned. What happened is that
12 Dr Pepin got a result of 1.80 and then adjusted it
13 to 1.75. Although it is a very poor copy at page 68,
14 there is a record of the test. If you look carefully at
15 this, you will see it says "Total", right in the bottom
16 right-hand corner, "2.41", and immediately above that
17 and above the line, it says "Butanol 0.61". The figure
18 for ethanol, which is the word for "alcohol", is
19 illegible, but if you subtract 0.61 from 2.41, you get
20 1.80.
21 Why was the figure adjusted? Dr Pepin apparently
22 told Professor Forrest that it was an adjustment made
23 necessary by the results from a quality assurance
24 sample. If that is done, you may think that it should
25 be spelled out absolutely clearly in the body of

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1 the report and that has not happened. But is there
2 necessarily anything sinister in it?
3 The suggestion is that it was done to produce
4 agreement with other results, and yet Professor Forrest
5 told you that he had no difficulty with the difference
6 between 31st August results of 1.74 and 1.87, and so
7 1.80 would be well within that bracket.
8 If the results had been 174, 180 and 187, no one
9 appears to be saying that there would have been anything
10 odd about that. So although the adjustment should have
11 been spelled out in the report, you may want to think
12 very carefully about the suggested motive for doing it.
13 It also appears that the actual results of the test were
14 kept, hence you have the document at page 68 to which
15 I have just been referring. You may wish to consider
16 whether or not that fact is of assistance to you.
17 I should also remind you that Henri Paul's legs were
18 massaged to get the samples on 4th September. You heard
19 that that could produce an elevation in the
20 blood/alcohol level of 10 per cent.
21 If you turn to page 75, you have Dr Pepin's summary
22 note. It gives you the results for blood said to be
23 from 31st August and 4th September. See in
24 the left-hand column, the first entry is "Blood sample
25 31/8/1997" and the second entry is "Blood sample

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1 4/9/1997", the result for 4th September having been
2 adjusted, as I have told you.
3 You will see the levels of Prozac products and
4 Tiapride that were found. Just to remind you, Prozac
5 products are Fluoxetine and Norfluoxetine, which you
6 find at the top of the two larger columns in the middle
7 of the page.
8 "Fluoxetine (therapeutic rates 0.9 to 0.5);
9 Norfluoxetine, metabolic therapeutic rates ..."
10 I can't read it. I think it is something to 0.5,
11 but the actual figure does not particularly matter.
12 You will see the levels of Prozac products and
13 the Tiapride that were found there and there is
14 obviously a close correspondence between them. Is that
15 sinister or is it some indication that these samples had
16 come from the same person? That is something that you
17 will wish to consider.
18 The results are then given -- we are looking again
19 at the left-hand column -- for urine, vitreous humour
20 and stomach contents, those samples said to have been
21 taken from Henri Paul on 31st August. Urine, 2.18,
22 vitreous humour, 1.73, stomach contents, 1.91.
23 Professor Forrest said that normally you would
24 expect a vitreous humour concentration to be higher than
25 blood -- all the experts agree about that -- so

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1 the result was unusual, but he said that taking into
2 account with all the other cases he had seen, it did not
3 flag up to him that this was something which raised
4 a major area of suspicion. He said that looking at
5 the overall picture, all the alcohol results we have
6 looked at were internally consistent, they matched each
7 other; in other words, they could all have come from
8 the same person.
9 He then went on to deal with the question of the
10 amount of alcohol someone would need to drink to get up
11 to these levels which are, as you know, in excess of
12 twice the legal limit for driving in this country. He
13 said that assuming Henri Paul had had the two Ricards
14 between 10.07 pm and 11.07 pm -- he was in the bar for
15 about 40 minutes between those times -- and nothing more
16 to drink while he was at the hotel, then he would also
17 have to have had the equivalent of the order of six more
18 Ricards or a litre of wine or 5 and a third pints of
19 beer between going off duty and coming back to
20 the hotel, so he would have had to be drinking at
21 the same rate of two Ricards per hour. But he said that
22 it could have been more and it could have been less.
23 These calculations were not precise and varied from
24 individual to individual.
25 Professor Forrest also said that the effects of

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1 alcohol on different individuals varied. No doubt you
2 know that from your own experience. He said that once
3 your blood/alcohol level got much above 50 on the United
4 Kingdom scale, then there will be impairment in
5 the abilities that you need safely to control a car,
6 such as reaction time, the ability to assess risk
7 appropriately, the ability to assess speed and direction
8 and so on.
9 He dealt with the question of whether the evidence
10 of Henri Paul's behaviour, once he had returned to
11 the Ritz, was consistent with the alcohol levels in
12 question. He said that there was a big difference
13 between having your ability to drive safely impaired and
14 being drunk. That may perhaps find an echo in the
15 context of the meeting between Lord Stevens and
16 the parents of Henri Paul. He thought that what could
17 be seen on the film, for example Henri Paul parking his
18 car, walking around the hotel, going upstairs, bending
19 down and balancing to tie his shoelaces and so on, could
20 all be performed by someone who was in excess of twice
21 the legal limit in this country. He said that if you
22 took alcohol on a regular basis, then you would acquire
23 tolerance to it.
24 He then turned to the question of carbon monoxide in
25 the blood. This is obviously something you will want to

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1 have very much in mind. The level in the sample said to
2 have been taken on 4th September was 12.8 per cent,
3 12.6 per cent or 12 per cent, depending upon which of
4 the three results you look at. That is very high. Some
5 smokers have a level of that order and you heard
6 evidence just yesterday that Henri Paul was a very heavy
7 smoker.
8 Professor Forrest thought perhaps 1 in 20 would. So
9 pretty unusual but, nonetheless, he thought it could be
10 explained on that basis. But what could not be
11 accounted for were the levels reported for samples said
12 to have been taken from Henri Paul on 31st August --
13 20.7 per cent, 21 per cent and 21.4 per cent. All
14 the experts are agreed that if Henri Paul had had that
15 sort of level when he was alive, it would have been
16 quite obvious that something was wrong, and all the more
17 so if he had consumed a substantial quantity of alcohol.
18 None of the experts could provide an explanation for
19 that sort of level, assuming that the blood came from
20 Henri Paul.
21 Professor Forrest wondered whether blood from
22 the chest cavity might have been contaminated in some
23 way, for example by bone marrow from rib fractures, and
24 wondered whether that could have interfered with
25 the measuring process, but it was speculation, he

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1 accepted. He could not point to any evidence that that
2 had happened and another expert said that fatty material
3 like that would effectively block the testing machine
4 and stop it working.
5 If the blood came from Henri Paul, no one can tell
6 you how that reading came about, and you have heard
7 nothing from Dr Pepin that might help you either. So
8 it is a mystery and a mystery that you must take account
9 of.
10 One possibility that has been raised is whether it
11 means that the blood which gave that reading could not
12 have come from Henri Paul. You would have to consider
13 that suggestion against the background of all the
14 evidence, including the evidence which is said to show
15 that the blood did come from Henri Paul, and you will
16 remember that the 20 per cent plus readings only apply
17 to blood said to have been taken from him on
18 31st August.
19 Even if you were satisfied that the 31st August
20 sample had come from Henri Paul, you would want to
21 consider whether this inexplicable reading causes you to
22 have doubts about the whole process of analysis. If the
23 carbon monoxide readings must be wrong, what about
24 the alcohol readings, the Prozac readings, the Tiapride
25 readings? That is obviously a question you will want to

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1 consider, but again you will want to look at the whole
2 spread of all the results, not simply the results for
3 one substance from one day's blood. To do that would be
4 to deprive yourselves of the opportunity of looking at
5 the whole picture. Of course you must consider
6 the details, but there comes a time when it is necessary
7 to stand back and see whether or not it is clear what
8 the overall picture establishes.
9 He was asked about a drug called Zentel or
10 Albendazole, which you know is used in the treatment of
11 worms. No one was ever found who had prescribed this to
12 Henri Paul, but it was found in hair samples said to be
13 from him, showing that it had been taken at some time in
14 the period between the end of July 1997 and the end of
15 August 1997. It was not found in any of the other
16 analyses, but Professor Forrest said that that could be
17 explained by him having taken it for a time and then
18 stopped and thus it was present in the hair but not in
19 the other samples. The hair did show Prozac and
20 Tiapride, and so, if it was not his hair, it would have
21 to be hair from someone who had also taken those
22 medications. There was no sign of worms at the post
23 mortem. Professor Forrest said perhaps the medication
24 had worked.
25 Finally, the CDT test which you heard can be

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1 a marker of excessive alcohol consumption over time.
2 Professor Forrest said that the results of this test
3 were reported to Dr Dumestre Toulet as 32 and
4 the standard as 20 should not be viewed in isolation.
5 Changes after death could affect the reading and
6 post-mortem samples should be refrigerated. We did hear
7 that what Dr Dumestre Toulet analysed came in a block of
8 ice. Professor Forrest said that the result should be
9 looked at with caution and not in isolation. All
10 the experts agree about this. Professor Forrest said
11 that the whole picture needed to be looked at and that
12 would include whether, for example, someone had been to
13 see their doctor and said that they had a problem with
14 drinking. That might also suggest excessive consumption
15 over time.
16 He indicated that he did not approve of the
17 statement issued by the French prosecutor's office on
18 1st September 1997, and I do not think anybody approved
19 of that. He agreed that the identification procedure of
20 Henri Paul's body and the collection, labelling and
21 overall chain of custody of samples attributed to
22 Henri Paul would not meet the standards in the United
23 Kingdom. All the experts said that.
24 You will have the undoubted deficiencies well in
25 mind, members of the jury, however, he said that he was

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1 "comfortably satisfied", to use his words, that the
2 samples that Toxlab in France received and analysed
3 could be attributed to Henri Paul. By "comfortably
4 satisfied", he meant something less than sure but more
5 than "more likely than not".
6 He was confident that at the time of his death,
7 Henri Paul's blood/alcohol level was around 175.
8 I asked him, if we put aside completely the samples
9 taken on 31st August and relied simply on 4th September,
10 what would his conclusion would be. He said:
11 "My conclusion, the ultimate conclusion, would be
12 that Mr Paul's ability to safely control the motor
13 vehicle at the time of his death was impaired as
14 a result of the consumption of alcohol."
15 Professor Shepherd, a pathologist, explained to you
16 that not all those who have abused alcohol over time
17 will have damage to the liver which can be seen with the
18 naked eye at post mortem. Henri Paul had no signs of
19 any, but Professor Shepherd said that you could have
20 evidence of it if you looked at a slice of liver under
21 a microscope. Although Professor Lecomte obtained such
22 tissue for, he believed, three years, it was then
23 disposed of without anyone ever having examined it.
24 Professor Vanezis is a professor of forensic
25 medicine and a pathologist. He went to Paris on

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1 2nd September and on 5th September he took part in
2 the press conference at Harrods. He said that he had
3 not had any difficulty with the difference between
4 the various alcohol readings. For Henri Paul to have
5 had the alcohol level reported and to have shown no
6 signs of it, he would have had to have built up
7 a tolerance by drinking high levels regularly.
8 He thought that the samples taken on 4th September
9 had been labelled and documented with much greater care
10 but, overall, he said he had some nagging doubts over
11 whether Henri Paul had been twice the limit because of
12 the way the chain of custody of samples had been
13 handled. He said that as he was not a toxicologist, he
14 would rather not answer the question. He agreed that
15 there was evidence which seemed to show that the
16 vitreous humour was likely to have come from Henri Paul
17 and it seemed that that testing would be virtually
18 conclusive of the alcohol level in his body, provided
19 that the toxicology had been carried out correctly.
20 Professor Oliver, a professor of forensic
21 toxicology, said that he was the person who had noticed
22 the higher levels of carbon monoxide in the
23 documentation and that the 20 per cent plus result was
24 inexplicable. The 12.8 per cent was high, but could
25 have come from a heavy smoker. He would not rule it out

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1 altogether.
2 The alcohol results for all the different analyses
3 could, in his view, all have come from the same person.
4 He thought that the samples that were tested were
5 probably those of Henri Paul. The combination of
6 findings was strongly indicative of that. The level of
7 alcohol would probably have impaired his driving, but
8 not necessarily if he had developed tolerance.
9 Professor Johnston was a professor of clinical
10 pharmacology. He dealt with the CDT test and said that
11 you needed more than one measurement for it to be of any
12 value. There could also be an overlap between what you
13 see in moderate drinkers and people who drink a lot.
14 Unlike Professors Forrest and Oliver, he was disturbed
15 by the closeness of some of the figures for the alcohol
16 tests and he thought that the most likely explanation
17 for the 20 per cent carbon monoxide readings was that
18 the blood was not Henri Paul's. He also thought that
19 the 12.8 per cent level would only be found in 1 in 100
20 smokers at best.
21 He said -- and this was not disputed -- that the two
22 Ricards, if they were all Henri Paul had had to drink,
23 would have given him a total of about 30 at the time of
24 driving, so well below the English limit and the French
25 limit, which is 50.

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1 Finally on the question of the CDT test, I should
2 refer to the evidence of Dr Dumestre Toulet herself.
3 She said that she was a toxicological expert with the
4 Court of Appeal in Bordeaux. She said that she had
5 received a sample sent by Dr Pepin on
6 15th September 1997. She got it on the 16th and did
7 the analysis on the same day. If the record of the
8 analysis shows 10th September 1997, then according to
9 her, that cannot be right. She did not get the samples
10 until the 16th. She thought part of the printing of
11 a figure "6" had been cut off to look like a "0".
12 She also thought that the document at page 88 --
13 that is the very last page of the bundle -- was not
14 Dr Pepin sending the blood on 19th September, but it
15 showed the receipt in Paris on that day, by Dr Pepin, of
16 her report. She sent the receipt back to him in due
17 course when he asked for all the papers, and you may
18 think that that was one mystery solved, although she
19 could not explain why, some years later, Dr Pepin should
20 have thought it was his receipt for posting the blood to
21 her.
22 Where, at page 81, the report refers to the blood
23 sample being sealed -- if you have page 81 -- that is
24 because it is a joint report, she said, and that refers
25 to the state of the sample when Dr Pepin received it.

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1 She said her understanding was that Dr Pepin had tested
2 the femoral blood from 4th September 1997 himself and
3 then sent it on to her, which is why her records showed
4 the sample as "free" and not as sealed.
5 She did not know why Dr Pepin had told the
6 Metropolitan Police on 18th May 2006 that there had been
7 no division of the sample of femoral blood and, in any
8 event, on 23rd May 2006, Dr Pepin had written to
9 Professor Forrest correcting that, saying that he had
10 opened the sample of femoral blood for his own tests and
11 that he sent the rest to Dr Dumestre Toulet.
12 As far as the results of the CDT tests were
13 concerned, she thought that they did have some value as
14 an indication of excessive alcohol consumption for at
15 least a week. She had taken part herself in work on the
16 CDT test. She said several times that one result should
17 not be considered in isolation, but along with
18 everything else that was known about someone's drinking.
19 I turn now to the DNA evidence, which may obviously
20 have a bearing on the toxicological evidence. The first
21 and most obvious point to make is that there is no
22 sample which has been tested to give a quantitative
23 reading for alcohol which has also been the subject of
24 DNA testing; in other words, no one can say to you,
25 "There was a bottle of blood said to have come from

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1 Henri Paul, half of it was tested for alcohol and gave
2 a reading of X, the other half went for DNA testing and
3 matched Henri Paul". Never done and it is not now
4 feasible to do any further tests. But why it was not
5 done and when it could have been done, we don't know.
6 So what DNA evidence is there? Blood said to have
7 been taken from Henri Paul on 31st August 1997, which
8 had been retained by Dr Pepin at Toxlab, was divided
9 into three sub-samples in 2005, along with a sample of
10 liver, and sent to three different laboratories.
11 The results all showed that the material had come from
12 Henri Paul.
13 So at the very least, you may think, it is quite
14 clear that some samples must have been taken from
15 Henri Paul at some point in order to get these DNA
16 results. Did the wrong samples just happen to get into
17 the bottles which were tested to give alcohol levels or
18 was there some other mix-up, accidental or deliberate?
19 That is something you will have to consider.
20 Mr Macleod did draw Professor Jamieson's attention
21 to an inventory of samples prepared by Dr Pepin which
22 was given to Mr Al Fayed's lawyers in the course of
23 their legal proceedings against Lecomte and Pepin in
24 France. There was a table which purported to show what
25 had happened to the samples from Henri Paul which

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1 Dr Pepin had at Toxlab and it looked as if the blood,
2 which was DNA-tested, was the blood sample which
3 Dr Pepin had examined and in which he had found a level
4 of carbon monoxide of 20 per cent plus. However, it was
5 not Professor Jamieson's document and you have not heard
6 from Dr Pepin about it. In all the circumstances, my
7 direction to you is that you should put it on one side.
8 The topic would require more explanation before it could
9 be safely relied on.
10 In addition, in 2006, Mr Green examined a sample of
11 blood that was said to have been taken by Dr Campana
12 from Henri Paul on 4th September. You saw a photograph
13 and it was marked "IML972147, Paul Henri, 4/9/97".
14 Printed is "sang cardiaque", but it looks as if it was
15 marked "FD" in handwriting, "femoral droite".
16 Mr Green's DNA tests showed that this blood had also
17 come from Henri Paul. As you know, it was the left
18 femoral sample that was analysed for alcohol, but again
19 you may think that this is certainly capable of
20 establishing that some blood was at least taken from
21 Henri Paul for analysis.
22 Lord Stevens and the Pauls.
23 Lord Stevens was the Metropolitan Police
24 Commissioner from January 2000, when he took over from
25 Lord Condon, until the end of January 2005. He was

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1 therefore responsible for the inquiry launched into the
2 various allegations arising out of the crash after
3 the inquests opened on 6th January 2004.
4 Just before his report was published on
5 14th December 2006, Stevens went to Paris to meet
6 Henri Paul's parents. You may think it was intended as
7 a family liaison meeting and was a thoroughly decent
8 thing to do. The meeting took place on
9 8th November 2006.
10 Soon after the crash, the papers were saying that
11 the cause of the collision was that the driver,
12 Henri Paul, was drunk. The cause of this was probably
13 an unfortunate leak from the French prosecutor's office,
14 made on sketchy information before proper analytical
15 analysis had taken place.
16 The leak described Henri Paul as being three times
17 over the French drink-drive limit. The Pauls were, not
18 surprisingly, upset by this. One newspaper's headline
19 described Henri Paul as "Drunk as a pig".
20 Stevens was keen to put the record straight because
21 the truth was that Henri Paul was not drunk in the sense
22 of being drunk and incapable. There is a note of
23 the meeting made by Detective Inspector Scotchbrook.
24 I wonder if we can manage to find that. The note
25 records that Operation Paget would not be saying that

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1 the driver was drunk. When the Paget Report came out
2 a few weeks later, it concluded that the driver was, on
3 the basis of blood/alcohol analysis, over twice the
4 English drink-drive limit and that this was a cause of
5 the collision. So it is said Lord Stevens was saying
6 one things to the Pauls and another in his report.
7 Stevens told the Pauls that his report would not be
8 saying their son was drunk. It would be saying that he
9 had had two alcoholic drinks, ie the two Ricards.
10 Stevens told them that their son could have gone out for
11 a drink after he had finished work and the Pauls agreed
12 that this could have been the case.
13 It is argued that the natural meaning of Detective
14 Inspector Scotchbrook's note is that Paget were saying
15 that he had had two drinks and no more. Stevens said if
16 you look at the whole note, it does not mean that.
17 Members of the jury, you have the note and you will form
18 your own view. You may think that the note could have
19 been clearer because it does not speak of the French
20 scientific analysis.
21 Henri Paul's lawyers say that here are the Pauls
22 being told their son had had only two drinks, the
23 implication being that he was fit to drive, and yet,
24 shortly afterwards, when the report comes out, it is an
25 entirely different story; he was over twice the limit.

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1 Those representing Henri Paul argued that this is or
2 may be a sinister change. We all know how much argument
3 there has been about the validity of the French results.
4 Doesn't the change, it is argued, fit with the picture
5 that the Paget inquiry was going to reject the French
6 conclusions on drink and somehow changed its mind at
7 the last minute, possibly because Stevens had been got
8 at? Stevens' answer is that those who were at
9 the meeting were well aware of the position and, anyway,
10 a letter sent two days later, on 10th November 2006,
11 sets out a more complete picture. I hope we have that
12 letter available. Henri Paul was not only under
13 the influence of alcohol, but also prescribed
14 medication. There was a further exchange of letters on
15 9th and 14th March 2007 which, likewise, made
16 the position clear.
17 Detective Inspector Scotchbrook's note did not set
18 out to be a verbatim record of a two-hour meeting. By
19 the time of the meeting, Paget were satisfied that
20 Henri Paul had drunk enough to be twice the United
21 Kingdom limit. If the truth was that Stevens had been
22 got at, he would have had to take 14 or 15 of his
23 officers with him, as well as square the position with
24 the French, and why was it in the interests of the
25 Metropolitan Police to do this anyway?

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1 We will break in a moment, but let me just deal
2 first with a short section dealing with a summary of
3 Diana and Dodi's movements.
4 Before looking at the circumstances which led to
5 Diana and Dodi leaving the rear of the Ritz in
6 the Mercedes driven by Henri Paul, let me summarise
7 their movements over the previous few weeks. Diana
8 accepted an invitation from Mohamed Al Fayed to join him
9 and his family for a holiday at his property in
10 St Tropez.
11 She flew to the South of France with Princes William
12 and Harry on 11th July. You have indeed a summary in
13 the bundle.
14 Dodi was in Paris at the time with Kelly Fisher, but
15 he joined the family group on 14th July. Diana and
16 the boys returned to the United Kingdom on 20th July.
17 In the days that followed, she travelled to the funeral
18 of Gianni Versace and stayed with her sister, Lady Sarah
19 McCorquodale in England.
20 She and Dodi saw each other in London and travelled
21 to Paris together over the weekend of 26th/27th July.
22 They first cruised on the Jonikal between 31st July
23 and 6th August. Thereafter Dodi spent some time in
24 the United States and Diana had two foreign trips,
25 the first to Bosnia from 8th to 10th August in

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1 connection with the landmines campaign and, the second,
2 a holiday with Rosa Monckton in Greece between 15th and
3 20th August.
4 The second cruise on the Jonikal began on
5 22nd August. Dodi and Diana went ashore in Monte Carlo
6 on the 23rd. They flew from Sardinia to Paris on the
7 30th, arriving at about 20 minutes past 3 in the
8 afternoon. Photographers were awaiting their arrival.
9 Philippe Dourneau and Henri Paul met the party (which
10 included the bodyguards and Myriah Daniels) and they set
11 off in two cars (a Mercedes and Dodi's Range Rover) to
12 the Villa Windsor. Paparazzi followed them in ways
13 which were described as intrusive, but were shaken off.
14 There is conflicting evidence about the quality of
15 Henri Paul's driving from Le Bourget, but you may think
16 that resolution of that issue has little bearing on
17 events later that night. Diana and Dodi made a brief
18 visit to the villa and then went to the Ritz where they
19 arrived at 4.35.
20 I have reminded you already of the evidence
21 concerning the visit to Repossi which occurred during
22 this first visit to the Ritz. Diana and Dodi left the
23 hotel at about 7 pm and went to Dodi's apartment at
24 Rue Arsene Houssaye. The plan was to go to dinner at
25 the Chez Benoit restaurant, but you will remember that

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1 on the journey from the apartment, Dodi decided at
2 the last moment to divert to the Ritz because, it would
3 seem, of the attentions of the following paparazzi.
4 It was in those circumstances that Diana and Dodi
5 arrived for the second time at the Ritz, at 10 minutes
6 to 10.
7 We will break off now for quarter of an hour.
8 (2.36 pm)
9 (A short break)
10 (2.53 pm)
11 (Jury present)
12 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: The plan that Henri Paul should
13 drive.
14 The answer to the question who decided that
15 Henri Paul should drive the Mercedes may be relevant to
16 the contention that this was a deliberately planned
17 collision. One thing that is not suggested is that
18 Henri Paul was a knowing participant in a plot to kill
19 or, as is now suggested, merely to injure or frighten
20 Diana and Dodi. This was no suicide mission on the part
21 of the driver.
22 Anyone planning a collision in the Alma Tunnel had
23 therefore to ensure that a vehicle carrying Diana and
24 Dodi went through the tunnel, which was not on the
25 direct or obvious route to Dodi's flat. Leaving aside

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1 bright flashes or blocking vehicles, it is relevant to
2 look at how events unfolded that night in the Ritz in
3 the period before departure. There is no suggestion
4 that either of the bodyguards was party to any such
5 wicked plan either.
6 There is certainly information that Dodi and Diana
7 were planning to come to Paris that weekend and that
8 Henri Paul knew of this. Didier Gamblin's
9 uncontroversial evidence, which was read to you,
10 suggested that Henri Paul was aware they were intending
11 to come at least from the Thursday.
12 He seems to have been one of, if not the, central
13 figure in coordinating arrangements and he went to
14 Le Bourget to meet them. That was hardly surprising
15 because he was acting head of security at the Ritz, but
16 he was also close to Dodi and trusted by him. Dourneau
17 and Musa were aware that the couple were coming the day
18 before and were required to have vehicles available.
19 Henri Paul went off duty at 7 pm and left the Ritz,
20 returning at about 10 pm. Although he had been closely
21 involved with the arrangements during the day, he
22 thought he had finished for the day. Dodi and Diana
23 were not expected to return to the Ritz and
24 Francois Tendil was asked to call him on his mobile in
25 the event that they did.

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1 Any journey by Dodi and Diana from the Ritz to
2 Rue Arsene Houssaye later that night did not even become
3 a possibility until they had returned to the Ritz, which
4 did not happen until about 9.50 pm. If Henri Paul was
5 the agent whose unknowing assistance was required to
6 ensure the car was in the right place at the right time,
7 there was very little time available to achieve that.
8 There would have been many much simpler ways to organise
9 an assassination, you may think. Apart from anything
10 else, the perpetrators had to ensure that Henri Paul,
11 rather than the regular chauffeur, drove the car.
12 It is true that there is very little evidence of
13 what Henri Paul was doing during the three-hour period
14 between 7 and 10 pm. His friend, Jean-Luc Morere, had
15 tried unsuccessfully to get hold of him to have dinner
16 with him and had left a message on his answerphone at
17 about 8 pm.
18 Josiane Le Tellier owns now and owned then a bar
19 called "Le Champmele" and was Henri Paul's neighbour.
20 She got to know him first as a customer and then as
21 a friend. She told the French police she was shocked at
22 the picture that the press had painted of him. He was
23 not an alcoholic, albeit he liked to party like anyone
24 else.
25 He was a visitor to her bar, but from time to time

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1 rather than every day. On the night of the collision,
2 he popped in for a chat but did not drink anything. At
3 first she said this was 8.30 to 9 pm, but she later
4 corrected this to 9.30 to 10 pm, when reminded that she
5 had said in her witness statement that it was about
6 10 pm. He arrived and left in his car. He said he was
7 on call and would be back around midnight. We know from
8 the CCTV and from Lucard's evidence that Henri Paul
9 arrived back at the Ritz at 10.05 pm.
10 When he gave evidence last November, Roulet said he
11 went home about 7 pm, saw Henri Paul in the
12 Bar de Bourgogne, had a short discussion with him and
13 went home. When it was put to him that the CCTV showed
14 him leaving the Ritz at 8.20 pm, he said he must have
15 got the time wrong, but insisted that he had
16 nevertheless seen Henri Paul at the Bar de Bourgogne
17 that night and not on the Friday night. No one else saw
18 him at the Bar de Bourgogne on the Saturday night, but
19 Roulet is clear he saw him there that night and that
20 that was the last occasion on which he saw him alive.
21 You will remember that Roulet was recalled to give
22 evidence primarily because he had remembered
23 a conversation in the tunnel after the collision.
24 However, the other point was that his phone records had
25 been found and they showed that he had phoned

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1 Henri Paul's flat at 8.33 pm and 8.35 pm, and the point
2 was made that he would hardly have been doing so if he
3 had seen Henri Paul in the Bar de Bourgogne around 8.20
4 to 8.25.
5 Bernard Lefort saw him in the Bar de Bourgogne not
6 that day but the day before. So has Roulet made
7 a mistake or has he accurately recalled the last time he
8 saw Henri Paul alive? He was certainly saying from soon
9 after the night in question that he did see Henri Paul
10 that night in the Bar de Bourgogne, but you now have
11 the evidence of the CCTV film and the telephone records
12 to consider.
13 One other piece of evidence, of which I should
14 remind you, relating to those three hours, comes from
15 Gerald Posner, the American with the two so-called
16 "trusted intelligence sources". Posner, you will
17 recall, had been commissioned to write a book.
18 Following completion of his evidence, he said he would
19 try to contact his sources so that we could speak to
20 them or hear from them direct. Nothing has been
21 forthcoming.
22 The source who Posner says he spoke to got the
23 information from French colleagues. Posner did not know
24 how many people the information had passed through
25 before the information reached him. The information was

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1 that between 7 and 10 pm that night, Henri Paul, who was
2 said to be a paid informant, met with the DGSE
3 (the French foreign intelligence service) and discussed
4 various things that did not include Diana. Some money
5 was passed to Henri Paul.
6 Posner was told that it was a coincidence that this
7 meeting had taken place on the day before the crash.
8 There was no suggestion of any relationship with any
9 British or United States intelligence agency.
10 The meeting was part business and part social. Dodi and
11 Diana were discussed, but not as an official topic.
12 I have the following observations to make to you
13 about this evidence. The evidence, if one can call it
14 that, is at least third-hand. The source has not been
15 identified and there has been no way of testing
16 the evidence. It is not related to any plot to kill or
17 harm Dodi or Diana and it would be unsafe to rely on it
18 as tending to show that Henri Paul had consumed alcohol
19 during this three-hour period.
20 At the start, I told you it was not necessary to
21 solve every sub-plot in the story and unravel every
22 thread. You may think that there are certain matters
23 relating to Henri Paul that simply cannot be resolved
24 with any clarity. The first is where he was and what he
25 was doing between 7 and 10 pm; the second is where

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1 the money in his possession when he died had come from;
2 and the third, where all the money had been coming from
3 that had been going in fairly regularly to his bank
4 account. You may have speculative ideas, but these are,
5 I suggest, quite simply mysteries that cannot be solved
6 on the evidence. In any event, are they mysteries that
7 are relevant to any verdict?
8 There is evidence that, having returned to the Ritz,
9 Henri Paul was behaving in an unusually communicative
10 manner. There is a picture that he was bossing the
11 show. You may wish to ask yourselves why this was so
12 and whether it was anything more than that he enjoyed
13 being in the limelight with a world-famous celebrity or
14 whether it is possible that drink had made him more
15 forthcoming than usual or was it a bit of both?
16 You have had a wealth of evidence about what
17 happened at the hotel in the period between 10 pm and
18 when the Mercedes left and you have the products of
19 the painstakingly careful work by Inspector Carpenter
20 with CCTV images and timelines.
21 The starting point is that when the couple arrived
22 unexpectedly back at the Ritz just before 10 pm,
23 the situation was chaotic, with a large group of
24 paparazzi and others milling around outside the front
25 entrance in the Place Vendome. The cause of this was

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1 the late change of plan not to dine at Chez Benoit and
2 the lack of notice to the Ritz of that change of plan.
3 Dodi was extremely upset about it and you may think he
4 was anxious to ensure that the arrangements went more
5 smoothly thereafter. Does that suggest the likelihood
6 of some active input on his part into what was to
7 happen?
8 The critical questions are who decided Henri Paul
9 should drive; when was it decided; when was it decided
10 to take a third car and leave from the rear entrance and
11 who made these decisions. Additionally, who decided
12 the third car should travel alone with the other
13 vehicles going directly to Rue Arsene Houssaye?
14 The evidence, members of the jury, of Rocher is
15 important. He was the night manager at the Ritz. At
16 20 minutes past 10, he had a conversation with Dodi at
17 the Imperial Suite. He told you that Dodi wanted to
18 know why the situation had been so chaotic when he and
19 Diana arrived. Rocher explained that they had not had
20 adequate notice. Rocher told him Henri Paul was in
21 the bar with the bodyguards. Dodi said that because of
22 what had happened, there would be a third car and it
23 would leave from the rear, but that information was
24 confidential to Rocher and Henri Paul.
25 Rocher said Dodi did not tell him who would be

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1 driving it. So here is clear evidence, if you accept
2 it, that the initiative to depart from the normal
3 practice of having a car and back-up vehicle leaving
4 from the front came from Dodi. But for that decision,
5 you may think that any staged accident could really not
6 have happened.
7 As soon as Dodi told him about the third car, Rocher
8 understood that they would not be staying the night at
9 the Ritz. Rocher said he told Henri Paul what Dodi had
10 said. They can be seen meeting at 10.30 pm. Tendil
11 said he was not told about departure from the rear until
12 Henri Paul told him half an hour before they left. That
13 would fit in with Dodi's instruction to keep it
14 confidential between Rocher and Henri Paul.
15 Mr Mansfield pointed out that at about 10.34, on his
16 first visit to the Place Vendome, Henri Paul disappears
17 from view for about eight minutes from the CCTV footage,
18 his point being that, during these eight minutes,
19 Henri Paul could have been receiving instructions from
20 the killers about what was to happen.
21 You may think this is complete speculation and not
22 an inference that can be properly drawn from the
23 evidence. Apart from anything else, you may think it is
24 perfectly possibly that Henri Paul just did not happen
25 to be picked up by any of the CCTV cameras during this

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1 period.
2 It is also suggested that it would not have been
3 necessary to direct Henri Paul to drive through
4 the tunnel, assuming that was where it was planned
5 the collision should take place, because the vehicle
6 could have been prevented by another vehicle from
7 exiting the expressway before the tunnel. But that
8 would have applied equally if Dourneau had been driving
9 and all that was needed was to ensure that whoever drove
10 took the professional chauffeurs' route, rather than
11 went by the Champs-Elysees.
12 How did it come about that Henri Paul was
13 the driver? The CCTV evidence shows little, if any,
14 opportunity for Dodi to dictate any further elements of
15 the decoy plan after that first meeting with Rocher.
16 The plan that Henri Paul should drive may have come from
17 Dodi through Rocher, although this is not Rocher's
18 recollection, or it may have been a decision made by
19 Henri Paul himself on the assumption that that was what
20 Dodi wanted. Either way it is apparent that Dodi
21 expected Henri Paul to organise it and that is what he
22 did.
23 Of course, it is theoretically possible for
24 Henri Paul to have contacted other people, away from
25 the hotel, after the plan was made to leave from

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1 the rear. But you may think that there is no evidence
2 that he did and no evidence of any reason why he should
3 have done so.
4 The regular driver, Dourneau, was outside the front
5 of the Ritz from when he brought the couple back at 9.50
6 until 12.20 am. At all times he was ready to drive. He
7 spoke to Henri Paul from time to time but could not
8 remember who told him he would not be driving or when.
9 He did not think he was told Henri Paul would be
10 driving. He was told they were leaving from the rear
11 and to stay at the front and make it look as if the
12 departure would be from there. He decided to simulate
13 departure from the front to see what would happen. He
14 did not do it as a joke.
15 Musa was the manager of Etoile Limousine. He is
16 seen going with others to the key cabinet in the
17 peristyle area at the entrance to the Ritz soon after
18 midnight. He said Roulet asked him for the key for
19 the third vehicle face to face, but he must be wrong
20 about that because Roulet was not in the hotel at the
21 time.
22 He said he had no other driver except himself and
23 then he was told that it would be Henri Paul driving.
24 He said the bodyguards had asked where the third driver
25 was. They referred to the man who had driven from

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1 Le Bourget, but did not know Henri Paul's name. He
2 could not remember when that conversation was. In his
3 statement he had said Wingfield explained the plan and
4 that Henri Paul was going to drive, that conversation
5 being under the peristyle just before getting the key.
6 Musa said Henri Paul was close to Dodi and usually
7 gave the orders who was to drive and the back-up car,
8 et cetera. He said he was reluctant to hand over
9 the keys but he was in a spot. He did not know if
10 Henri Paul actually held a licence. He felt he did not
11 have much of a choice as the request could only have
12 come from Dodi or those close to him. He felt he could
13 not really see himself saying "no" to his employer if he
14 wanted to go on having work from the Ritz. There was
15 pressure to say "yes". The Fayeds were in the habit of
16 getting what they wanted. Henri Paul did what he was
17 told by the Al Fayeds.
18 Dourneau said that in all the time he had worked for
19 Dodi, this was the only occasion on which someone else
20 had driven. The two bodyguards were not responsible for
21 the ill-considered decision to leave without a back-up
22 vehicle with Henri Paul driving, but they were
23 vigorously criticised for not stopping it. Obviously
24 they both have an interest in who directed that this
25 should happen. If it was Dodi's decision, he was their

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1 employer and it was difficult to put any blame on them.
2 Trevor Rees says that when Dodi and Diana left the
3 restaurant, Dodi told him to go back to the bar without
4 any further indication of his plans. If Trevor Rees had
5 seen Henri Paul drinking alcohol, he said he would not
6 have let him drive the car. Henri Paul did, of course,
7 drink two large Ricards with the bodyguards, but the
8 bodyguards said they thought they were soft drinks.
9 Rees said from first to last he saw nothing wrong with
10 Henri Paul. Wingfield and others took the same view.
11 Trevor Rees said either Dodi told him Henri Paul
12 would be driving or Henri Paul told him Dodi had made
13 the arrangement. Initially he was told Dodi and Diana
14 were going to leave without security from the rear, but
15 he said there was no way they could travel without
16 security. Eventually he went along with the compromise
17 that he would travel with them. It was Dodi's decision,
18 he said. He could not force the issue. He thought they
19 were told of the plan 30 or 40 minutes before departure,
20 but he must have known of the plan when they were doing
21 the recce at 11.42, you may think.
22 Trevor Rees had an opportunity to look at the CCTV
23 before he gave evidence. Previously he had recollected
24 that the change of plan came from Dodi, but having seen
25 the CCTV, he thought it much more likely he had learned

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1 of it through Henri Paul. He was vigorously
2 cross-examined by Mr Mansfield. It was suggested he was
3 less in control of events than he should have been and
4 that there was no evidence that he ever challenged
5 Henri Paul's plan. He would not accept this, saying he
6 only agreed on the basis that there was one bodyguard
7 for fear that, if he did not agree, neither he nor
8 Wingfield would be allowed to go. It was also suggested
9 he should have phoned Handley-Greaves or Macnamara or
10 the operations room if he had any real concerns. Nobody
11 told the operations room about the decoy plan so they
12 would not have known about it. He said he did speak to
13 Dodi, but he could not keep pushing the point.
14 The bodyguards' concerns were not listened to.
15 Wingfield, likewise, watched the CCTV before he gave
16 evidence. He had previously suggested that there was
17 not enough bodyguard cover, but Mohamed Al Fayed said he
18 wanted it low key. He said that they had raised this
19 with the operations room but they were told it was what
20 the boss wanted and it was going to happen. Wingfield
21 described the paparazzi during the day as a nuisance
22 rather than dangerous -- a point you may wish to bear in
23 mind on the gross negligence allegation.
24 During the day, Trevor Rees asked Dodi about
25 the plans for the evening and was told "You will find

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1 out when we get there". Dodi was agitated by
2 the disturbance when they arrived at the Ritz and
3 Wingfield told him that if he told them where they were
4 going, they could sort it out in advance. Dodi seemed
5 to accept that.
6 They got the crowd pushed back from the front
7 entrance so that they could have an orderly departure
8 later in the event that they were not staying at
9 the Ritz.
10 Sometime after 11 pm Henri Paul came up to see them
11 in the foyer and said Dodi had changed the tasking.
12 The plan was to go out the back way. They had had no
13 prior indication from Dodi that that would be happening.
14 The two bodyguards were to be at the front and there was
15 to be a third vehicle at the rear. Wingfield said he
16 said "No way", but Henri Paul said Dodi had made up his
17 mind. It may be they had a couple of discussions with
18 Henri Paul about the arrangements. He could not really
19 remember.
20 He said that at about midnight they had a brief
21 conversation with Dodi. He popped his head out of the
22 Imperial Suite and they told him the plan was
23 a non-starter. Wingfield said he sort of agreed to have
24 one bodyguard with him. The plan had been okayed by his
25 father. That was it. Wingfield thought that in those

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1 circumstances, it would be disrespectful to phone
2 Mohamed Al Fayed.
3 We also heard that Mohamed Al Fayed's authority was
4 sometimes prayed in aid when it had not been given.
5 The issue, members of the jury, in respect of this
6 aspect of the evidence, is whether the 28 seconds shown
7 on the CCTV was a long enough period for such
8 a conversation with Dodi to have taken place.
9 Wingfield too had originally said that Dodi had told
10 him of the plan. His statement and what he said to the
11 French judge differed from his evidence after he had
12 seen the CCTV. What was suggested was that the
13 bodyguards were trying to shift the blame for the
14 hopeless plan onto Dodi.
15 You may readily conclude that there is no evidence
16 that Mohamed Al Fayed did in fact approve the plan.
17 It was such a crazy plan, it would been surprising if he
18 had done so. There is some evidence that
19 Mohamed Al Fayed advised Dodi to stay put in the Ritz,
20 advice which he sadly did not take.
21 There is an issue about the absence of telephone
22 calls from the bodyguards to the operations room in
23 London. Unfortunately some telephone records are
24 missing and there is some doubt about what happened to
25 the operations room records, although some eventually

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1 surfaced. The point that is made is that if the
2 bodyguards were unhappy with the arrangements, they
3 should have said so to London.
4 You may think that this is not something that can be
5 resolved with any clarity. It is not relevant from
6 the viewpoint of gross negligence on the part of
7 Henri Paul or the paparazzi how he came to be in
8 the driving seat. He was a free agent. It can only
9 have been of relevance if you think the arrangements for
10 the journey may have been deliberately set up with
11 Henri Paul driving for the purpose of creating a staged
12 accident in the tunnel.
13 Let's now look at what the eye witnesses have to
14 say.
15 Members of the jury, with any road accident, you
16 very rarely get an entirely consistent account from all
17 the witnesses. The reason is obvious: different people
18 see different things. Witnesses do not remember
19 everything they have seen. People do not begin to
20 appreciate events until something has drawn their
21 attention to them. Individuals view events from
22 different places and so see things from a different
23 angle or get a different perspective.
24 In this case, one group of witnesses, the paparazzi,
25 have a particular interest in protecting their own

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1 position. They, or at least a number of them, were
2 originally under criminal investigation and it was
3 obviously in their individual interests to be as far
4 removed from the Mercedes and the crash as possible.
5 With one exception, Darmon, the rider for Rat, none has
6 been prepared to give evidence and be cross-examined.
7 You will therefore wish to treat what they said in their
8 written statements and to the French inquiry with great
9 caution. Mr Croxford exposed a good deal of what some
10 of them had said as plainly self-serving and untrue, but
11 the fact that we have not heard from them does not
12 necessarily mean that they all have something to hide.
13 There are two other problems. First, the collision
14 occurred over ten years ago and there is a real problem
15 with people's memories. Secondly -- and we heard this
16 from at least two sources, Gigou and Lafaille --
17 a number of people seem to have had a compelling desire
18 to pretend that they were there when in truth they were
19 not there at all.
20 It has unfortunately been possible for an
21 individual, so minded, to pick up enough evidence from
22 television and newspaper reports to make out
23 a convincing case that they did indeed see the crash or
24 have relevant evidence to give.
25 It is, I suggest, not going to be possible to

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1 rationalise all the evidence and piece together an
2 entirely coherent account of what happened. Not all of
3 the witnesses can be correct. You may think that the
4 safest way to approach assessment of all the conflicting
5 evidence is to start with those facts that are plainly
6 established and work from there.
7 We know the Mercedes collided with the 13th pillar
8 and we know that, before that, there was an impact
9 between the front right of the Mercedes and the rear
10 left of a white Fiat Uno. The impact was a glancing
11 blow, the overlap being about 17 centimetres. The Fiat
12 survived and disappeared westwards into the night.
13 It is also known that the speed of the Mercedes was
14 65 miles per hour, plus or minus 5 miles per hour, when
15 it hit the pillar, and it was pretty well the same when
16 it had hit the Fiat. So Henri Paul was driving at about
17 twice the speed limit for the road.
18 We know the route the Mercedes took, having started
19 its journey at the rear of Ritz in Rue Cambon, and we
20 know that the paparazzi were interested in obtaining
21 photographs.
22 Against that backcloth, let's look at what
23 the witnesses had to say. I begin with those who were
24 eye witnesses and who had no obvious axe to grind.
25 I start with Mr Lucard, employed at the time

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1 casually by the Ritz as a car jockey. He should,
2 logically, have been the first witness, but he could not
3 be found and turned out to be almost the last.
4 His evidence will be quite fresh in your minds. He
5 said that Henri Paul announced to the waiting paparazzi
6 outside the rear of the hotel that they would not catch
7 him and that the Mercedes set off at great speed.
8 Mr Lopes Borges was driving a green Peugeot 306. He
9 stopped at the Champs-Elysees lights intending to go
10 along the embankment road. Can we just get our bearings
11 and have a look at the bundle of documents? Page 16
12 shows the plan, and you can see there, in the middle, on
13 the left of the plan, the Champs-Elysees and the
14 junction with the Champs-Elysees. Sorry, that is
15 the photograph not the plan.
16 Then, on page 31, you can see pictures as would be
17 seen by the driver of a vehicle driving south at that
18 point, in the way that the vehicles were in this case.
19 Mr Lopes Borges said first in line at the lights was
20 a "big black German car", no doubt the Mercedes. It was
21 one or two vehicles in front of Mr Lopes Borges. It
22 went off very fast. Others followed it, nearly bumping
23 him, including a 4x4, which he described as a white
24 Pajero, said to be Odekerken's.
25 Lopes Borges went along the embankment road at 40 to

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1 50 kilometres per hour -- I will translate all of these
2 figures into miles per hour, members of the jury. I had
3 forgotten that one, but it is quite slow -- overtaking a
4 BMW which was the only car he saw. In fact I think it
5 might be 40 or 50 miles per hour. That might be
6 a mistake. Anyway, he was not going very quickly.
7 When he got to the scene, a small car arrived from
8 the right and went between the pillars and the Mercedes.
9 You will remember from photographs taken in the tunnel
10 that wheel tracks in the debris do show that a number of
11 vehicles must have driven past the crashed Mercedes. In
12 particular, there is a striking shot taken by Rat, which
13 is page 117 in the photos bundle, which shows a car
14 doing just that. He was asked to leave the tunnel by an
15 Egyptian-looking gentleman. Although Mr Lopes Borges
16 described seeing a Pajero, he did not see any
17 motorcycles.
18 Ana Simao, his passenger, gave a similar account,
19 but said that their vehicle was the first vehicle at the
20 lights. She told the police in France that they were
21 cut up by a 205 or an Espace when they entered
22 the expressway. When they reached the tunnel, there
23 were two photographers already taking pictures and
24 pedestrians were on their way to the tunnel. A small
25 white car that had been in front of them drove between

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1 the pillars and the Mercedes.
2 What Jean-Louis Bonnin had said on various occasions
3 was read to you because he had died. It is not agreed
4 evidence and he has not been tested before you in
5 cross-examination, so you will have to bear in mind that
6 in deciding the weight that you give to it. But you may
7 think that there is no obvious reason why his account of
8 ten years ago is less likely to be reliable than anyone
9 else's.
10 He describes the early part of the journey. He was
11 stationary at the lights in the Place de la Concorde at
12 the corner of the Champs-Elysees. The Mercedes was on
13 his right. A scooter with two people on it got in
14 between. Bonnin wanted to travel straight on and then
15 turn right onto the embankment expressway.
16 The passenger on the scooter was taking repeated
17 photographs with his flash of the occupants of the
18 Mercedes.
19 When the lights changed to green, Bonnin and
20 the scooter set off, but the Mercedes was held up by
21 a dark car in front. When it could, the Mercedes sped
22 off and the scooter and the dark car followed it at
23 the same speed. Bonnin continued along the embankment
24 expressway. A light-coloured Peugeot came up behind
25 with headlights full on and two people in it, followed

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1 by a motorbike with two on it, with the lights full on
2 and sounding its horn.
3 When Bonnin arrived at the underpass, the Mercedes
4 had crashed and was smoking. He managed to avoid it,
5 but could not stop in the right-hand lane because
6 the two cars, the motorbike and the scooter were sitting
7 in the middle of that lane. The men were running
8 towards the Mercedes with their cameras.
9 He said the Mercedes had seemed to be blocked by
10 other vehicles. In his mirror he saw it pull out and
11 heard the engine roar and the wheels spin. The Peugeot,
12 with its headlights full on, stuck to his bumper,
13 sounding its horn. He said he was afraid and then
14 pulled over. The motorcycle too was sounding its horn
15 and had its headlights full on. Bonnin let it pass too.
16 At the Place de la Concorde, the bodyguard looked
17 annoyed and ill at ease. The Mercedes overtaking him
18 was going very, very fast. He said he really thought
19 there was going to be an accident because, as he put it,
20 you do not drive along the embankment at that speed on
21 a Saturday night. Finally, he said the junction with
22 the sliproad (meaning, I think, the one immediately
23 before the Alma Tunnel) was the most dangerous in Paris.
24 Thierry Hackett went round the Place de la Concorde
25 from Rue de Rivoli and followed the embankment road

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1 because the Champs-Elysees was too crowded on a Saturday
2 night. At the Alexandre III tunnel, he saw lights in
3 his rearview mirror, "brief glimpses", he said.
4 If you look at pages 35 and 36 of the big bundle, 35
5 is going into the Alexandre III tunnel and 36 is
6 the view that you get once you are actually in
7 the tunnel and it was in the picture of one or other of
8 those photographs that he is describing.
9 He was going at at least 50 miles per hour and
10 the vehicle behind at least 70. He was then overtaken
11 by a black Mercedes and also by two or three motorbikes,
12 travelling 10 to 15 feet behind it. There was doubt
13 about the number of motorbikes he saw because, in
14 a drawing he had made close to the time of the
15 collision, he had identified four or five.
16 The Mercedes, he said, was moving left to right and
17 swerving. In your bundle at section 5, the first
18 document, you will see Mr Hackett's sketch where he
19 identifies, I think you will see, three motorcycles
20 behind and one motorcycle alongside the Mercedes.
21 The driver was, in his view, being hindered by
22 the motorbikes. He said he left at the sliproad before
23 the tunnel, slowing to 30 miles per hour. The sliproad
24 by which he left you can see at page 38 of the big
25 bundle.

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1 David Laurent's evidence was read to you. As he was
2 entering the tunnel at 70 to 80 kilometres per hour,
3 that is 45 to 50 mph, he had to swerve to avoid a small
4 light hatchback travelling abnormally slowly. In
5 mid-tunnel he was overtaken by a bigger car. As he came
6 out of the tunnel, he heard a crash behind. Nathalie
7 Blanchard, his passenger, said the car they overtook was
8 light coloured. She did not see any motorbikes. It is
9 a possibility that the light car described by these two
10 may have been the Fiat Uno.
11 I come next to the Le Nys and the Cathelines, four
12 important witnesses. They were walking together on the
13 grass area. I think they identified the grass in
14 number 42, which of course did not have that fence
15 alongside it at the time, you will remember.
16 Mr Le Ny first saw a big black car coming towards
17 him in the left-hand lane, when it was 100 metres from
18 the tunnel. It was travelling very fast. He thought
19 the driver was crazy. There was one motorbike some
20 distance behind. There were two people on it. It was
21 going less fast than the car. He then heard the noise
22 of braking and sounds consistent with the impacts we
23 know occurred in the tunnel. He was surprised and
24 shocked at the speed of the Mercedes, even, as he said,
25 having lived in Paris for a year.

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1 Apart from the speed of the vehicle, he made no
2 other criticism about the movement of it. Mrs Le Ny's
3 attention to the car was drawn by the sound of braking.
4 She saw the car going "very fast". She last saw it at
5 the entrance to the tunnel. She saw one motorcycle
6 after she had heard the noise of the crash. There were
7 two people on it. It was going fast but not much faster
8 than people normally drive along that road. She tried
9 to stop it.
10 Jean-Claude Catheline was on the grass walking
11 towards the traffic. He saw two large cars side by
12 side, each in its own lane, but quite close together.
13 He put the speed at 100 kilometres per hour. That is
14 just over 60 mph. There was a motorbike and a taxi some
15 distance behind. Then he described a light bump, noise
16 of tyres and a big noise. He was unable to stop
17 the taxi and the motorcycle entering the tunnel.
18 Mrs Catheline's account was similar to that of her
19 husband, but she did not see the motorcycle and the taxi
20 until after the crash. None of the four saw a small
21 white car or any bright flash of light. The fact that
22 they did not see anything resembling a Fiat Uno is
23 perhaps curious as they were well placed to see it, but
24 it was undoubtedly there somewhere and this may be
25 a good illustration that, in these situations, not every

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1 detail is laid down in everyone's memory, nor does
2 everyone see everything.
3 You will probably remember Francois Levistre. He
4 says he was driving his black Ford Ka and entered
5 the expressway from the service road at Cours La Reine.
6 When entering the tunnel, he saw the lights of a car and
7 the lights of a motorbike behind. They were catching up
8 with him. The motorcycle overtook the Mercedes in
9 the tunnel on the Mercedes' left.
10 When he was nearly at the exit of the tunnel he saw
11 what he described as a major white flash from
12 the motorbike, directed at the car. He saw it in his
13 mirror. On exiting the tunnel, he could see in his
14 rearview mirror the crashed Mercedes and the motorbike
15 with two people on it which had stopped by the crashed
16 Mercedes. The passenger on the bike went to the car and
17 looked in, turned to his colleague and made
18 a throat-cutting gesture to indicate what Levistre
19 described as "job done" and then rode off very fast.
20 Levistre said he stayed between two and five minutes
21 at the scene and then left. During that time he was too
22 frightened to get out of the car. In that period nobody
23 was in the tunnel and no vehicles passed the Mercedes.
24 Interestingly, according to Levistre, neither the rider
25 of the bike nor his passenger was carrying anything.

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1 Witnesses who give evidence in our courts fall into
2 many different categories, ranging from those at the one
3 end of the scale who are patently honest and reliable to
4 those at the other, on whose evidence you would not
5 swing a cat. The assessment is yours, but my advice to
6 you is that you should linger long before relying on
7 anything that he said. You heard Levistre, you have
8 a full transcript of his evidence. He has made
9 statements and been interviewed on many occasions,
10 including on behalf of Mohamed Al Fayed in 2006 and for
11 NBC News in 1998, as well as the police and
12 Judge Stephan. He has given greatly conflicting
13 accounts. He has a criminal record in France. You may
14 think his evidence is worthless.
15 Let me remind you of just four points. There are
16 many more if you examine his evidence closely. In his
17 first statement to the French police, he did not say
18 that he saw the big car hit the pillar and on
19 29th April 1998, he told Judge Stephan he was positive
20 he never saw a white Fiat Uno. He claims to have seen
21 the crash and subsequent events through his mirror, but
22 no white Fiat Uno figures in his description at all, but
23 we know one was in contact with the Mercedes just
24 seconds before it crashed, nor, as he claims, did the
25 Mercedes block both westbound lanes. The photographs

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1 show this not to have been the case.
2 Third, his story has changed from there having been
3 more than one motorcycle to just one motorcycle.
4 The fourth point about his evidence, which is
5 a particularly bizarre feature, is the claim he made,
6 after giving evidence, to have recovered bullet casings
7 and mystery debris from the underpass. Despite
8 promises, this has never been produced.
9 Lionel Ronssin had gone from James Huth's flat to
10 park his car. He was walking along the pavement when
11 his attention was drawn towards the Mercedes. He saw it
12 entering the tunnel and going quite fast, 120 to
13 130 kph; 75 to 80 mph. He did not see any bright or
14 flashing lights. Then he heard a major braking,
15 the noise of impact and a horn. Huth was staying at his
16 parents' flat at 40 Cours Albert 1er and that we find at
17 page 12 of the big bundle.
18 Number 40 I think is -- you will see the little
19 beige lines up here -- it starts at 42 and then 40 is
20 going from left to right. (indicating)
21 So Huth was staying at his parents' flat at number
22 40. He heard a screeching of tyres and then a series of
23 what he describes as "shocks". He went to the scene to
24 see if he could help. There were no cars on the same
25 side as the Mercedes, nor any motorcycles. Pedestrians

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1 had just arrived, mainly on the other side of the
2 tunnel. A photographer arrived and started taking
3 pictures.
4 It is possible that there may have been a car
5 stationary or driving off beyond the exit at the top of
6 the slope, he said. Having lived near the tunnel for
7 20 years, he could not see why a car driving fast into
8 the tunnel would have to brake unless something was in
9 the way.
10 Gary Dean had been out to dinner and went for a walk
11 on his own. He was walking from the Place de l'Alma
12 between the service road and the expressway in the
13 direction of the on-coming traffic. 38 I think shows
14 that best. He heard a whooshing sound of car tyres and
15 saw a large dark car coming towards him at an inordinate
16 speed. It was going at 70 or 80 mph or more. It was in
17 the left-hand lane. There were no other vehicles near
18 it when he first saw it. It made a noise as if changing
19 gear. Its lights went from dipped to full beam. He
20 lost sight of it as he went into the tunnel. He did not
21 see any bright flashing lights. After it entered
22 the tunnel, he heard the noise of impacts.
23 He went to the tunnel and looked in. He saw maybe
24 three motorcyclists or scooters. One was ahead of the
25 Mercedes and two behind. They were parked in

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1 the vicinity of the crashed car. He told a French
2 policeman he had seen a Mercedes entering the tunnel at
3 great speed.
4 It was suggested to Dean that his ability to assess
5 the speed of the vehicle was impaired because of the
6 amount that he had had to drink. He would not accept
7 this, but agreed that he would not have been fit to
8 drive a car. When cross-examined by Mr Edmund
9 Lawson QC, he said the Mercedes was going too fast and
10 it was obvious. It was being driven in a very dangerous
11 manner. He did not see any motorbikes.
12 Alain Remy's evidence was read to you because
13 we could not secure his attendance. Accordingly, he
14 could not be cross-examined. You will bear that in mind
15 when you come to consider the weight you can attach to
16 his evidence. He was travelling west, ie in the same
17 direction as the Mercedes, and he was driving his black
18 Volkswagen Golf.
19 On coming out of the Alexandre III tunnel, he was
20 overtaken on his left by a dark vehicle travelling at
21 what, in mph terms, is 87 to 94 miles per hour. 30 or
22 40 seconds [later] he was flagged down at the entrance
23 to the tunnel and asked for his mobile as there had been
24 a smash. When he looked into the tunnel, he could see
25 people trying to open car doors. These people were not

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1 carrying cameras. Some people began to congregate, some
2 with cameras.
3 Members of the jury, there was an issue about
4 the time Remy arrived at the scene and he was asked
5 whether he was sure that the vehicle that had overtaken
6 him was the one that crashed. His speed was, he
7 reckoned, about half the speed of the car that overtook
8 him, so it would not have taken him long to travel the
9 300 metres or so to the Alma Tunnel. Asked how long, he
10 said less than a minute, but he could not be too
11 precise.
12 When the car overtook him, the noise was similar to
13 the roar of an aircraft engine before take-off. He
14 thinks he would have noticed if the car had been
15 pursued. It was possible that some other vehicle
16 overtook him after the car and before the crash, but it
17 would have registered had it been going at the same
18 speed.
19 Now, if Remy arrived at the scene at 12.35 am, which
20 is the time he said his clock showed, that was later
21 than the collision by some minutes. The question arises
22 whether his clock was accurate and whether he accurately
23 recollected what it said.
24 Does this discrepancy and the short time it would
25 have taken Remy from being overtaken by the car to

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1 getting to the tunnel (300 metres at 70 kph) suggest
2 that the car that overtook him was in fact nothing to do
3 with the accident? For if it was, Remy's evidence is
4 worthless.
5 Jean-Pascal and Severine Peyret were also travelling
6 westwards through the tunnel. The collision took place
7 behind them. Mrs Peyret says they were overtaken by
8 a motorcycle going out of the tunnel. It had one rider
9 on it and it was going fast. She did not see where it
10 went. She originally told the police that the
11 motorcycle could well have been involved in the
12 collision.
13 Brian Anderson was the American who gave evidence
14 via the videolink. There is a very serious issue about
15 whether his evidence is truthful and, indeed, whether he
16 was an eye witness at all. He says he was in Paris from
17 a few days before the crash. He had dinner with
18 a friend and claims that the friend dropped him off in
19 south-east Paris at about half past 11. There he picked
20 up a cab. It would have taken the cab 15 or 20 minutes
21 to drive to the scene of the crash, thus putting him at
22 the scene long before the crash took place.
23 The cab was going to drop him off in Avenue George V
24 and it is said that there was no need for the cab driver
25 to have gone through the tunnel. Anderson said he was

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1 in the back of the taxi. He heard the noise of
2 a high-performance engine of a car or a motorcycle
3 coming from behind. When he looked, he saw the first
4 motorbike behind the car, to its left rear. It was 2 or
5 3 feet behind. Both the motorbike and the car were
6 travelling at between 20 and 25 per cent in excess of
7 the speed limit. Bearing in mind the speed limit is
8 the kph equivalent of 31 miles per hour, that was no
9 great speed. There was a second motorbike to the rear
10 right of the Mercedes. It appeared to be trying to
11 overtake the Mercedes and the other motorbike. There
12 was a third motorbike behind. They were in a cluster;
13 like a swarm around the Mercedes.
14 Anderson drew a sketch which you will find at 5.6 of
15 your bundle. One of the motorbikes had two people on
16 it; the other two had one person on each. All the
17 vehicles went past. He saw what he described as
18 a pretty significant flash of light from the direction
19 of the bateaux-mouches -- that would be over at
20 the river -- and then a loud bang. The light was quite
21 bright, he said, and he thought it would have been
22 obvious to any pedestrian. He said he thought there was
23 a half- to one-second delay between the flash and
24 the bang.
25 When this happened, according to Anderson, the

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1 Mercedes was between 40 and 100 yards in front and his
2 taxi was 40 or 50 yards short of the tunnel where it
3 stopped. They had been passed by the Mercedes 500 to
4 700 yards before the tunnel and, as it did so, he saw
5 one motorcycle by the side of it. After the collision,
6 they were stationary for less than a minute. The taxi
7 driver declined to stay. There were between five and 12
8 people scattered around the Mercedes when they passed
9 it. The taxi driver had to hoot a time or two to get
10 through. One person was taking photographs when they
11 passed the Mercedes. He did not see any other car go
12 through ahead of them. The driver took him to a cafe
13 where he stayed for 45 minutes before returning to his
14 hotel. Once at the hotel, he telephoned his wife,
15 Kitty.
16 Now, it is true that Mr and Mrs Catheline did see
17 a taxi, although Mrs Catheline only saw it after
18 the crash. However, you may ask whether Mr Anderson was
19 in a taxi at the tunnel at all and, if he was, whether
20 his evidence about the flash of light which he says he
21 saw come from the direction of the bateaux-mouches is
22 true. If what he says is true, does it contribute to
23 our debate?
24 There are a number of very serious problems about
25 the credibility of Anderson's evidence. They are: his

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1 timing put him at the tunnel long before the collision;
2 the hotel records show calls made at the time of the
3 collision, 00.23, 00.25 and 00.27. You have
4 the print-out at 5.5 in the bundle. He says that they
5 were automatically generated calls to his computer; he
6 told the police that he called Kitty on the hotel phone,
7 but the call is not recorded on the list that we have.
8 When this was pointed out to him, he said he must have
9 called Kitty on his cellphone; when interviewed soon
10 after the collision, first in France and then in
11 America, he made no mention of a bright light.
12 He claims to have seen Clarence Williams and Michael
13 Walker at the Brigade Criminelle, but they were not
14 there; he claims to have been interrogated by the French
15 police in circumstances he described and to have made
16 several written statements, but the police have no
17 record of having seen him.
18 You will remember what Mr Gigou said on 10th March.
19 He had read Anderson's evidence on the website. It was
20 complete lies, he said. He had never met him. Anderson
21 was never seen by the French police and nothing has been
22 concealed.
23 He said, and I quote:
24 "... during my numerous investigations in this
25 matter, I have been led to hear the most astonishing

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1 testimonies by people who apparently wanted to become
2 a little more famous, pretending they were witness of
3 the events."
4 Then Anderson claims his passport and taxi receipts
5 were seized by French police and that his passport was
6 subsequently returned to him at a hotel in EuroDisney,
7 but the French police have no record of this and,
8 anyway, why should they wish to seize these items.
9 Anderson's account, you may think, seemed to become
10 more embellished with each television appearance. You
11 will remember the evidence of Clarence Williams by
12 videolink, how they met and how he was suspicious of
13 Anderson. Also Michael Walker's evidence was read. He
14 corroborated Williams' description about how Anderson
15 had cornered the two of them in a restaurant.
16 One of the problems, members of the jury, about
17 people like Levistre and Anderson is that if snapshots
18 of their accounts keep appearing on television or in
19 the media, this provides material to feed those who have
20 convinced themselves that what happened in the tunnel
21 was no accident. You, of course, have had the advantage
22 of seeing their evidence properly tested and you are
23 able to consider it in the context of the evidence you
24 have heard from all the other witnesses. The television
25 viewer does not have this benefit.

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1 Grigori Rassinier was travelling towards Concorde.
2 He heard a loud noise and saw the Mercedes coming to
3 a halt. He must have been pretty close to the collision
4 but he did not stop and continued on his way. He was in
5 the left-hand lane. He saw a motorbike emerging from
6 the smoke and continuing on its way towards Boulogne
7 with just a single person on board. The only
8 pedestrians he noticed were people coming down the ramp
9 of the underpass as he was coming out. His evidence was
10 read as uncontroversial. If there was any blocking
11 vehicle or flashing light, he did not see either and you
12 may ask why. He thinks the motorcycle must have been
13 following the Mercedes.
14 Oliver Partouche was a part-time chauffeur waiting
15 for clients. He had been outside number 5
16 Avenue Montaigne before crossing to a spot where he had
17 some view of vehicles travelling towards the tunnel. In
18 your bundle, under tab 5, you have a computer
19 reconstruction of that view. I suggest that first you
20 look at page 14 to see where he came from.
21 Page 14 shows Avenue Montaigne and it shows
22 number 5. 5.18 in your bundle is the computer
23 reconstruction of the view that he had. Can we go to
24 that? I am sorry, it is in your bundle. You have it.
25 It is here, members of the jury. You can see it in your

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1 bundle.
2 He heard an engine noise and saw a Mercedes coming
3 very, very fast, followed by a number of motorcycles.
4 He had the impression of a compact group. The engine
5 was revving fast. There was a car in front which he
6 said in his statement at the time was, he thought,
7 trying to block the Mercedes to enable the paparazzi to
8 take photographs.
9 The Mercedes pulled to the left of the vehicle that
10 was obstructing it in the right-hand lane. Behind
11 the Mercedes was a motorcycle tailgating it. He could
12 not see if there were two people on it. He was not able
13 to say whether the vehicle in front was deliberately
14 blocking the Mercedes. He thought the Mercedes was
15 trying to get away from the paparazzi.
16 It was a typical over-revving engine noise. He
17 thought flashes were coming from the motorbike following
18 the Mercedes, but he could not say because
19 the expressway was well lit. The vehicle in front of
20 the Mercedes did not perform any dangerous manoeuvres to
21 stop the Mercedes getting past. The group of vehicles
22 which he had left noticed to his left was in his view
23 for a matter of seconds. The vehicle in front was
24 a dark colour. Maybe it was a Ford Mondeo.
25 He heard a squeal of tyres and then an impact.

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1 Asked if before the sound of impact, he saw any unusual
2 lights or flashes, he said:
3 "I think it was, yes, it was maybe before."
4 Then he was asked:
5 "Where those flashes were coming from?"
6 He replied:
7 "I think it was coming from the tunnel."
8 Then his statement was put to him in which he had
9 said:
10 "To reply to your question, I thought there were
11 flashes coming from the motorbike, which I remind you
12 was positioned behind the car containing the VIPs.
13 However, I cannot be certain, given that
14 the Georges Pompidou expressway is very well lit."
15 He then said that he totally relied on that
16 statement.
17 He was reminded that in his very first statement,
18 written within hours of the collision, he said he had
19 seen reflections of flashes from a camera as he was
20 looking towards the group of vehicles. How much all of
21 this fits with the known involvement of the Fiat Uno in
22 the path of Mercedes evidenced by marks on the road is
23 something you will no doubt want to consider.
24 Mr Gooroovadoo, whose evidence was read because he
25 refused to come to court, was also a chauffeur and was

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1 with Partouche. He was quite close to Partouche when he
2 heard the roar of a car engine. He looked and saw
3 a motorbike with two people on it. The pillion
4 passenger was taking one photograph after another in the
5 direction of the vehicle making a noise. The vehicles
6 disappeared into a tunnel and he heard a tremendous
7 noise. He could not say if the motorcyclist hampered
8 the car's progress. He could not remember if there were
9 any flashes at the entrance to the tunnel.
10 There was a vehicle in front of the Mercedes
11 travelling at a normal speed. The Mercedes accelerated
12 to pull out and overtake it. The Mercedes was in
13 the right-hand lane. He did not know if the vehicle in
14 front of it had anything to do with the photographers.
15 He added:
16 "However, I did see the Mercedes pull out whilst
17 accelerating even harder to overtake on the left with
18 its tyres screeching."
19 After the screech, he could not any longer see
20 the Mercedes properly as it sped into the tunnel. He
21 estimated its speed as in excess of 100 kph, which is
22 62 mph. That accords with the agreed evidence of the
23 reconstruction experts.
24 The motorcycle was following the Mercedes very
25 closely. He could not say if the pillion passenger was

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1 taking pictures with a flash-gun or if it was
2 a reflection of neon lights producing a flashing effect.
3 He said he hardly had time to say to himself that
4 the driver was mad to drive that fast when he heard
5 a huge crash. After the crash, there was a scuffle and
6 jostling and punches were thrown. He heard, "Fuck off,
7 I am doing my job, I am the same as you" and suchlike.
8 The car in front of the Mercedes was travelling
9 normally and did not especially attract his attention.
10 The motorcyclist also was going very fast, 30 or
11 40 metres behind the Mercedes. He said, as the Mercedes
12 went past, he said to himself "He is a madman".
13 Mohamed Medjahdi was another witness whose evidence
14 was read to you very recently. He was travelling west
15 in a light-grey Citroen at 80 to 90 kph, 50 to 55 mph.
16 The traffic was moving freely but there were
17 nevertheless a few vehicles travelling in each
18 direction. Nothing attracted his attention until he was
19 in the Alma Tunnel. When he was on the flat section,
20 just before the incline, he heard a screeching of tyres
21 from behind. He looked in his mirror and saw the
22 Mercedes approaching across the road at an angle of
23 45 degrees and skidding. He thought its speed at least
24 150 kph, over 90 miles per hour. The car straightened.
25 Then there was a loud noise as it struck the central

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1 reservation and a part of it flew off. It rebounded to
2 the right-hand side.
3 He told a television programme he instinctively
4 accelerated to stop it hitting him, but on reflection he
5 thought it was probably 40 or 50 metres behind.
6 Medjahdi was in the right-hand lane. He has never
7 mentioned any vehicle between his and the Mercedes and
8 in one statement said there was none.
9 Medjahdi's passenger, Souad Moufakkir, gave evidence
10 last November. She said they were going 80 to
11 90 kilometres per hour in the right-hand lane; again, 50
12 to 55. She gave a description of what happened behind
13 that was consistent with Medjahdi's. She thought that
14 they were close to the exit from the tunnel at the time.
15 However, she mentioned something else of importance.
16 It was this.
17 She saw a white Fiat in the left-hand lane going
18 the same speed as they were. It was very difficult, you
19 may recollect, to get a coherent account from
20 Souad Moufakkir, so there may be difficulty in placing
21 much reliance on her evidence, but where she appeared to
22 end up was in agreeing that she did not mention
23 the white Fiat originally because her boyfriend did not
24 want the hassle that that was likely to create.
25 No white Fiat is mentioned in his evidence.

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1 However, what Souad Moufakkir says now is that while she
2 was scared of saying anything while they were still
3 going out, that is not the situation any longer.
4 Further, she was not asked about the white Fiat by
5 the police. That only came later when a television
6 company questioned her. There was, she said, a white
7 Fiat Uno which they overtook before the crash.
8 The driver was Mediterranean type with brown hair and
9 aged about 30. There was a German Shepherd dog in
10 the back.
11 She was shown the same photographs as the Dauzonnes
12 but did not recognise anyone. She said she asked
13 Medjahdi to overtake the Fiat because it was too close.
14 Also the driver seemed to be looking for something on
15 the seat beside him and not to be paying proper
16 attention. His behaviour seemed very strange.
17 She was asked by Mr Hough if she had seen a bright
18 flashing light at any stage. She said that she did
19 during the collision, but it was possible that it was
20 the headlamp of the Mercedes as it moved from one side
21 of the tunnel to the other. She also said there were
22 other vehicles some distance behind the Mercedes but
23 that she did not see any motorcycles.
24 Mr Boura was driving in the opposite direction in
25 the left-hand lane approaching the tunnel at

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1 approximately 80 kph/50 mph. Before he got to
2 the tunnel, he saw flashlights which he described as
3 "violent flashes", which he thought could be speed
4 camera flashes. He could not say whether they were
5 flashes from cameras. He got one third of the way into
6 the tunnel without seeing any other flashes. He then
7 heard the sound of a small impact and the screeching of
8 brakes and he