Hearing transcripts

31 March 2008 - Afternoon session

19 (1.45 pm)
20 (Jury present)
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Members of the jury, embalming.
22 Embalming can only conceivably be a relevant issue in
23 these proceedings if Diana was pregnant when she died,
24 for it was said that her body was unlawfully embalmed by
25 the French on the instructions of the British

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1 Establishment for the express purpose of covering up
2 pregnancy. If you conclude that Diana was not pregnant,
3 you can forget about the embalming aspect of the case.
4 I shall deal with the evidence in broad outline very
5 shortly. It is fairly clear.
6 Maude Coujard was the deputy prosecutor on duty on
7 the night of the crash. She told us that she was not
8 involved at all in the decision to embalm Diana's body
9 and her evidence was not challenged. Jean Monceau is
10 a qualified embalmer. He was called to the hospital to
11 apply dry ice. The body was in an ordinary room and
12 it was very hot. Monceau considered, in his
13 professional judgment, that the body was not presentable
14 with dry ice and there was a need to embalm. Embalming
15 was performed at his suggestion and Keith Moss from
16 the Embassy agreed. Embalming was required for two
17 reasons: first, to prevent decomposition and, second,
18 for the presentation of the body.
19 Dr Eva Steiner gave evidence as to the position in
20 French law. Two authorities are required.
21 The authorisation of the Mayor had to be based either on
22 a written expression of the last will of the deceased or
23 a request by a person having authority to organise
24 the funeral.
25 Where, as here, someone has died on foreign soil,

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1 a person like Moss from the Embassy would be appropriate
2 to make their request and there would be no legal
3 problem in Madame Monteil giving authorisation in lieu
4 of the Prefect of Police.
5 Monceau spoke to Madame Monteil, who was the head of
6 the Brigade Criminelle, and when she was told
7 Prince Charles and President Chirac were coming, she
8 said she would do what was necessary and authorisation
9 would be issued. The embalming process took about
10 two hours and started at 2 pm.
11 Moss said that the treatment of the body was urgent
12 and had to be done, but he could not remember whom he
13 had contacted who actually authorised. He said it was
14 possible he gave Monceau authority to do the work
15 because of the difficulty of the situation. Neither Jay
16 nor Coujard had any involvement in the decision, nor did
17 Levertons, the English undertakers, who were sent to
18 bring Diana's body home. They took embalmers with them
19 just in case.
20 Michael Gibbins, Diana's comptroller, says Tebbutt
21 called him from the hospital several times -- Tebbutt
22 was Diana's driver -- and said steps needed to be taken
23 to make Diana's body presentable. He thinks that he
24 says that if it was on the advice of the hospital, then
25 it should be done. Tebbutt, you will recall, said that

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1 the presentability of Diana's body became a very
2 important issue to him and, he thought, to others.
3 In Dr Steiner's view everything was done to comply
4 with French law. Be that as it may, you may think that
5 everyone concerned acted in good faith and did their
6 best in unusually trying circumstances. There is simply
7 no basis for concluding that embalming was performed in
8 furtherance of a conspiracy to hide pregnancy. Although
9 there was evidence that embalming can produce false
10 positive results in chemical tests for pregnancy, you
11 will remember Dr Chapman's evidence that embalming made
12 no difference to whether evidence of pregnancy could be
13 seen in the uterus.
14 A word next, members of the jury, about previous
15 relationships. You may think that the previous
16 relationships of Diana with Hasnat Khan and Kelly Fisher
17 with Dodi have very little, if any, bearing on
18 the strength or nature of the relationship between Diana
19 and Dodi.
20 Also, many of the witnesses who spoke about their
21 impression of the relationship between Dodi and Diana
22 were, you may think, inevitably likely to be influenced
23 by their own perspective or prejudices. Khan and
24 Kelly Fisher were obviously most directly placed to
25 speak about their own relationships, but even they may

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1 be influenced on how they would like the world to see
2 them.
3 Khan declined to give evidence even by videolink,
4 which was, of course, his legal entitlement. But this
5 meant that nothing he had said could be tested, nor was
6 it on oath. Kelly Fisher did give evidence and was
7 cross-examined. It may be that some of those who spoke
8 about the relationships in fact said more about
9 the reliability of their own evidence than they did
10 about either of the relationships.
11 Both Khan and Kelly Fisher were on the scene at the
12 time the relationship between Dodi and Diana started in
13 July 1997. Khan had been going out with Diana for
14 the best part of two years and there is considerable
15 evidence of a strong bond between them. There was
16 a conflict between his desire for a private life and
17 commitment to his profession as a heart surgeon and
18 the inevitable publicity surrounding Diana. The two
19 were not compatible on a long-term basis and he was not
20 prepared to give up his life, albeit he said a lot of
21 people had told him that even a married man would leave
22 his wife if he had the chance of being with Diana.
23 Khan said Diana ended the relationship and neither
24 party had ever proposed marriage, but does it really
25 matter who ended it? The fact that Khan was a Pakistani

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1 and a Muslim did not, on the evidence, concern anyone
2 except possibly the late Mrs Shand Kydd. The real
3 stumbling block to a permanent relationship was
4 the difference in lifestyle between an up and coming
5 heart surgeon who had a professional and a very private
6 life and the life of a woman who at that time was
7 probably the best known and most photographed woman in
8 the world. The fact that the arrival of Dodi on the
9 scene precipitated the end of the relationship you may
10 think tells us nothing about the permanence of Dodi's
11 relationship with Diana.
12 As to Kelly Fisher, you may think that her evidence
13 does not advance the issues in the case much further
14 either. She says that she met Dodi in June or early
15 July 1996. She was doing well as a model. She said
16 Dodi seemed to be moving the relationship forward very
17 fast, showering her with presents and, by August or
18 September, was talking about marriage.
19 She says she moved into his flat in Rue Arsene
20 Houssaye, but there is some issue about that and about
21 how much time she spent there. You were, incidentally,
22 shown a series of photographs of various gifts of
23 jewellery that he gave her and I hope it can now be
24 shown on the screen.
25 In November 1996, Dodi went to the United States of

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1 America for Kelly's sister's wedding. Part of the
2 reason for going was to tell her mother he wanted to
3 marry her. She is said to have been delighted. She was
4 given an engagement ring, but not until February 1997,
5 at the Beverley Hills Hotel. It was so big that she was
6 not very happy about wearing it in public and picked out
7 a smaller one in Harrods, you remember, some time later.
8 She said that 9th August 1997 had been mentioned as
9 a possible wedding day, but other than identifying
10 a caterer, nothing seems to have been done towards any
11 arrangements.
12 You heard the tape of a conversation between Dodi
13 and Kelly Fisher after Diana came on the scene. You may
14 think it gave a rather different picture of her from
15 the demure and reasonable person she had presented to
16 you when she gave evidence. That may have been
17 the result of stress at the time. Be that as it may,
18 there was obviously a disagreement between them about
19 whether there had been or still was an engagement. But
20 again, resolving that issue one way or the other really
21 does not matter. Myriah Daniels said that Dodi had told
22 her quite early on he was not going to marry Kelly.
23 Melissa Henning said Dodi asked Kelly Fisher more than
24 once to stop saying they were engaged. Dodi, she said,
25 was dating other woman and told Melissa that he would

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1 not be dating Kelly for much longer.
2 Even if you think Dodi behaved badly towards
3 Kelly Fisher, does it really help you about how he and
4 Diana came by their deaths?
5 Next, engagement. The two people who could tell us
6 whether Dodi and Diana were engaged or were about to get
7 engaged are Dodi and Diana. Sadly they cannot because
8 they are no longer alive.
9 What we have heard about engagement has been almost
10 entirely speculation. I say "almost entirely" because
11 you have heard evidence from Mohamed Al Fayed about
12 a conversation he had with Dodi and Diana shortly before
13 the crash on the Saturday night. Mohamed Al Fayed says
14 that during that conversation, they told him that they
15 were engaged and that they would announce it on the
16 Monday morning once Diana had spoken to her sons.
17 It was, of course, the same conversation in which he
18 says pregnancy was mentioned. Dodi told his father that
19 he had already proposed and that Diana had accepted. He
20 had got the ring. You will have to decide whether
21 Mohamed Al Fayed is telling the truth, that there was
22 such a conversation and that both pregnancy and
23 engagement were disclosed to him.
24 There is a wealth of evidence from Diana's friends
25 and others in which discussions with Diana are referred

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1 to and opinions expressed about her relationship with
2 Dodi. I shall come to it shortly. But before I come to
3 it, let's pause and ask: what does the answer matter in
4 the grand scheme of the case? You may think only to
5 this extent. It is said that, along with pregnancy,
6 engagement could have been -- and Mohamed Al Fayed says
7 it was -- the motive for murder. It was the coming to
8 light of this information that precipitated the plan for
9 a staged collision.
10 You may readily conclude that Dodi had quickly
11 become very fond of Diana and that, from his point of
12 view at any rate, this was more than a summer romance.
13 There is a good deal of evidence to support this view
14 and it may be that he indeed planned to pop the question
15 on the night of the collision, if he had not done so
16 already. But you may think it is unlikely that Diana
17 would have committed herself to marrying Dodi without
18 having first discussed it pretty thoroughly with the two
19 Princes.
20 Those who have ventured an opinion on the permanence
21 of the relationship are as follows. I summarise what
22 they said. Richard Kay, the Daily Mail columnist and
23 close friend of Diana, says he spoke to her between 6
24 and 6.30 pm on the night of the crash. Diana did not
25 say anything to him about getting engaged or married or

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1 about a ring and he thinks she would have raised
2 the subject, had it been relevant, because of a desire
3 for his reaction. She was, however, as happy as he had
4 ever known her. He said that they did speak earlier
5 about marriage and her reply was, "Absolutely not.
6 I have just got out of one marriage and I am not getting
7 into another". Back in 1997, it was Kay's opinion that
8 it was likely they would have married, but now he has
9 changed his mind and thinks it more likely that they
10 would not.
11 Simone Simmons said that Diana could not keep
12 secrets; the implication being that if there were to be
13 an announcement on the Monday, some at least of Diana's
14 friends would have been told. On the other hand, you
15 may think there is some substance in the suggestion that
16 if she was going to marry Dodi, she would not have told
17 anybody, just as she did not tell anybody about
18 the Bashir Panorama interview.
19 Michael Cole said Dodi told him there would never be
20 anyone other than Diana. Cole also said he knew they
21 were going to get married but that they had not
22 announced it. I will return to his evidence later.
23 Burrell said that by mid-August, Diana's
24 relationship with Dodi was, as he put it, "fresh, new
25 and exciting", but he did not have the impression that

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1 Dodi was "the one". He did not believe that they were
2 engaged. He told us that Diana told him she was
3 expecting to be given a ring and that he advised her to
4 wear it on the fourth finger of her right hand, which
5 she thought was a good idea. She told him she needed
6 marriage like a bad rash.
7 Diana mentioned nothing to him about an engagement
8 ring. If she had been going to announce her engagement,
9 she would have told friends and the boys, but, because
10 the return from Paris had been put back by a day,
11 the boys were not due back at Kensington Palace until
12 mid-morning on the Monday.
13 Devorik, the Argentinian, said that on the Wednesday
14 or Thursday before she died, she spoke about
15 the relationship and she said, "Come on, Roberto, you
16 are Latin and you Latins know what a summer romance is
17 all about". He did not think Diana would have married
18 Dodi. At any rate it would have been discussed
19 thoroughly with the boys before she did. She also, he
20 said, told Elsa Bowker that Dodi was too generous and
21 nice to her. Devorik said that Diana would not have
22 announced her engagement on the Monday because
23 the children were the cornerstone of her life.
24 Diana told Rita Rogers she would never marry Dodi
25 because of the religious problems it would cause.

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1 Rita Rogers thinks that Diana would have told her if she
2 had got engaged. Also, Rita Rogers had predicted
3 the gift of a ring and Diana kept saying to her, "No
4 ring yet". When Rita Rogers told her it would be an
5 engagement ring, her reply was, "Oh dear, I hope not.
6 What will I say?" Rita Rogers advised her to tell him
7 that she would have to think about it.
8 Sarah McCorquodale thought that there was a strong
9 possibility that Diana might have married Hasnat Khan.
10 She did not think that Diana really believed the
11 relationship had ended. She spoke to Diana on the
12 afternoon of Friday 29th August, but there was no
13 mention then of engagement or pregnancy. Her impression
14 was that the relationship had not much longer to run.
15 Any engagement would have been discussed first with
16 William and Harry.
17 Dodi phoned Benson on 29th August saying he could
18 not really talk over the phone, but he and his friend
19 (which was how he described Diana) had some very
20 exciting news. He asked if Benson was around on Monday
21 at lunchtime as this news would mean there were lots of
22 issues to discuss. There was absolutely no doubt in
23 Benson's mind that they were getting engaged. The only
24 person he told was his partner, Fiona. No record of
25 this telephone call was ever produced. Further,

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1 the press release by Cole on Friday 5th September was
2 wholly inconsistent with this alleged phone call.
3 Benson is sure he mentioned the telephone call to
4 Mohamed Al Fayed some weeks later, but was unable to say
5 when.
6 Barbara Broccoli, whose evidence you heard read to
7 you very recently, received a similar phone call the
8 same day as Benson. Dodi told her he had something very
9 important to tell her that he could not tell her over
10 the phone. She thought it related to his relationship
11 with Diana. However, she was unable to speculate beyond
12 that. He and Diana wanted to meet her on the Monday,
13 which they agreed to do at Pinewood Studios, where
14 a James Bond film was being made. You may think that
15 they could not easily have combined that visit with
16 a major announcement of an engagement on that day.
17 When considering Benson's evidence, you may wish to
18 bear in mind the observations of Mr Justice Mann about
19 Benson's evidence in another case involving
20 Mohamed Al Fayed. He described him as a witness who was
21 reluctant to give evidence that he calculated might be
22 against Mohamed Al Fayed, yet capable of exaggeration if
23 the case required it.
24 You may therefore wish to approach Benson's evidence
25 with caution. You may remember he was asked about

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1 a passage in his statement to the police in which he
2 said he had friends and contacts in the security
3 services who told him there would have been no doubt
4 whatsoever that Diana's movements and calls would have
5 been constantly monitored.
6 He was cross-examined about this, the suggestion
7 being that what he had said about friends and contacts
8 was an overstatement and untrue. Counsel also suggested
9 that this fitted in neatly with Mr Justice Mann's
10 description. But, members of the jury, the bottom line
11 is that it is a matter for you and not counsel what you
12 make of Benson's evidence.
13 Melissa Henning, Dodi's assistant in California,
14 discussed the relationship with Dodi and her impression
15 was that it was going well. Dodi mentioned the
16 possibility of Diana staying in Malibu in September. On
17 one occasion, when he telephoned from the Jonikal, he
18 told Miss Henning that he would "ask the question" and
19 that he and Diana might be spending some time together
20 in the future. No reference, however, was made to an
21 engagement.
22 I should mention briefly Rene Delorm, the butler.
23 On 30th August, when Diana was not in earshot, Dodi told
24 him to have the champagne on ice when they returned
25 later. He said he was going to propose to the Princess

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1 and showed Delorm a ring.
2 Delorm, you will recall, has written a book and
3 there was something that he told the police that was not
4 mentioned in the book. This was that he saw Dodi on his
5 knee, with his hand on Diana's belly. Asked why he did
6 not mention it in the book, he said he did not wish to
7 take advantage of the situation. There was a rumour
8 that Diana was pregnant and he said how could he,
9 Delorm, tell whether she was.
10 He then agreed that he had had no difficulty in
11 giving that account to a film company. It was also put
12 to him that he had said in the book that just before
13 they were leaving the apartment, he made a signal to ask
14 Dodi if he had proposed and Dodi shook his head
15 slightly.
16 You may think that it is perfectly possible that
17 Dodi was indeed intending to propose to Diana that night
18 and that he had bought the 'Dis-Moi Oui' --
19 Tell Me Yes -- ring in case he got a favourable answer,
20 perhaps with the thought that the two of them might
21 choose a more formal engagement ring later. You may
22 think, however, that a proposal is one thing, an
23 affirmative answer quite another.
24 Raine Spencer said Diana felt Dodi was very special.
25 The relationship was getting stronger and closer all

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1 the time. She said she thought it likely they would get
2 engaged and then married. It was not, in her opinion,
3 a summer romance.
4 Rosa Monckton thought Raine Spencer's opinion was
5 ill-informed. She also disagreed with Hasnat Khan,
6 saying in her view that he had ended the relationship
7 with Diana because he could not stand the publicity.
8 Hasnat Khan's account was that he was given the push
9 after Diana returned from the first holiday with
10 the Al Fayeds.
11 Rosa Monckton spoke to Diana on Wednesday
12 27th August when Diana was just changing boats. She
13 said it was bliss, but that she was looking forward to
14 coming home to the boys and the gym. There was no
15 indication of a forthcoming engagement and Rosa Monckton
16 said Diana would have told her. She admits that she did
17 not approve of the relationship with Dodi. It was
18 suggested that her evidence was influenced by her
19 attitude to the Al Fayed family. You will not overlook,
20 however, that Diana gave Dodi her cherished late
21 father's cufflinks -- I think you have the letter in
22 the bundle at tab 24 -- and the affectionate letters to
23 Dodi that were produced.
24 Then there was Lady Annabel Goldsmith. Diana phoned
25 her around 24th or 25th August (probably on the 24th)

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1 because there was some question of Dodi wanting to buy
2 her late husband's aeroplane. In the course of
3 the conversation, Annabel said to Diana, "You are not
4 doing anything silly, are you?" Diana's response was
5 that she needed marriage like a rash on her face, which
6 is said to be very much a Diana expression; the same
7 expression she used to Burrell. Lady Annabel said Diana
8 was plainly having a good time, but said nothing about
9 the depth or intensity of the relationship. Diana told
10 her that Hasnat Khan had finished their relationship.
11 Lucia Flecha de Lima spoke to Diana on the Wednesday
12 before Diana died and asked Diana if she thought Dodi
13 was the one. The response was, "Well, he might be
14 because he is very kind to me". She thought Diana was
15 infatuated with Dodi, but that it was not a serious
16 relationship. Lucia Flecha de Lima thought that she
17 would have been told if it was.
18 Susan Kassem also used the word "infatuated". She
19 spoke to Diana twice on Saturday 30th August. In
20 the morning Diana told her she was looking forward to
21 coming back to the boys and the gym and having her own
22 space. The second call was at about 9 or 10 pm
23 London-time. Susan Kassem wished her a safe flight and
24 they agreed to meet on Monday. There was no mention of
25 an engagement in either call.

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1 Lucia Flecha de Lima, like Hasnat Khan, says it was
2 Diana who finished the relationship with him. The
3 announcement that Diana was going to make was that she
4 was going to step out of public life.
5 Members of the jury, at the end of the day, does
6 the precise state of the relationship between Dodi and
7 Diana when they died really matter? The tabloid press
8 were obviously going to speculate and the events of
9 August 1997 had provided some basis for their doing so.
10 If you think the issue of engagement has any
11 relevance as a motive for murder, it may be that there
12 is not much of a line to be drawn between an actual or
13 an imminent engagement on the one hand and
14 the perception that one was likely on the other.
15 Having considered all the evidence, you may think it
16 improbable that Diana was going to rush into an
17 engagement, particularly bearing in mind her concern for
18 the young Princes. On the other hand, Dodi and Diana
19 were obviously getting on very well together and who can
20 tell what the future might have held? Perhaps Cole got
21 it right on this occasion, when he said in Churchillian
22 style on 5th September, and repeated on ITV on
23 20th September 1997, that if the planet lasts for
24 another thousand years, people would still be wondering
25 about the significance of the ring. You may think it is

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1 difficult to believe he would have said that if Dodi and
2 Diana had really told Mohamed Al Fayed on the night of
3 the crash that they were engaged. The first public
4 indication of engagement by anyone in
5 the Mohamed Al Fayed team was when it was mentioned by
6 Mohamed Al Fayed in an interview with Piers Morgan that
7 was published in The Mirror on 12th February 1998.
8 The ring.
9 There has been a vast amount of evidence about
10 rings, but let's cut through it and try to see where it
11 leads us. The gift of a ring may be relevant as
12 evidence of an engagement or it may be relevant as
13 evidence of the depth of feeling by one person for
14 another. As to the latter, there is no doubt that Dodi
15 was an extremely generous person. Witness, for example,
16 the jewellery he gave to Kelly Fisher and, in
17 particular, rings. Further, it cannot be in doubt that
18 he had strong feelings of affection towards Diana.
19 Given those factors, you may think that gifts of
20 jewellery generally, whether it be rings, brooches,
21 earrings or anything else, does not advance the case any
22 further from what we already know.
23 Let's concentrate therefore on an engagement ring.
24 The ring that has been identified is the 'Dis-Moi Oui'
25 or Tell Me Yes ring, purchased from Repossi across

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1 the Place Vendome on the Saturday afternoon. The mere
2 fact that it came from the 'Dis-Moi Oui' range does not
3 necessarily mean that it was an engagement ring. You
4 will recollect that Diana was not present in Repossi's
5 shop that afternoon. The ring only came to
6 the forefront of events when Claude Roulet found it at
7 Repossi, took it across to the Ritz and showed it to
8 Dodi, who then jumped at it as being what he wanted.
9 The ring was found at Rue Arsene Houssaye by
10 Rene Delorm in a briefcase in the wardrobe on the day
11 after Dodi and Diana died. You may think that suggests
12 it never reached Diana. There is no evidence that Diana
13 participated in choosing it, and if the true situation
14 is that the ring was not purchased to reflect an already
15 existing engagement, there are two other possibilities:
16 either Dodi was going to propose that night, in the hope
17 of getting an affirmative answer, or it was simply
18 bought as a present for the Princess.
19 It is a matter for you what you make of Repossi's
20 evidence, but you may think you cannot rely on
21 significant parts of it and that, in particular, his
22 story about Dodi and Diana visiting a hotel in St Tropez
23 and choosing a ring is unreliable. What could be better
24 publicity for a jeweller than that he was the supplier
25 of Princess Diana's engagement ring and closely involved

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1 in its selection? Despite promises to supply documents
2 that would confirm his oral evidence, not a single piece
3 of paper has been forthcoming from Repossi since he gave
4 evidence.
5 The cost of the ring was 115,000 francs or about
6 £11,500 sterling, with the exchange rate at the time,
7 a lot by most people's standards, but was it the sort of
8 ring that you would expect an Al Fayed to give as an
9 engagement present to a Princess?
10 You may think it was something that did not compare
11 too favourably with some of the gifts to Kelly Fisher,
12 who Mohamed Al Fayed said in evidence was never engaged
13 to his son and was no more than a casual girlfriend.
14 Interestingly, you may think, the price of the ring was
15 omitted from the document that Mohamed Al Fayed allowed
16 Repossi to show the press, but the price of the other
17 ring, offered to Dodi and not selected, was there. You
18 might see this on [INQ0006249]. One price is there and
19 the other has been deleted.
20 How, you may ask, did the price of £130,000 get into
21 the newspapers? Mohamed Al Fayed's evidence was that
22 Dodi told him on the Saturday night, when he spoke to
23 him, that he had bought the ring; this was the ring that
24 he had seen in the window in Monte Carlo and then bought
25 it in Paris that day.

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1 Now, it is established that the only days that Dodi
2 and Diana were in Monte Carlo were 5th and
3 23rd August 1997. Delorm says that on the first visit
4 to Monte Carlo, Dodi and Diana spent 20 minutes in
5 the jewellers while he stayed outside with the
6 bodyguard. Although Delorm devoted three pages of his
7 book to Monte Carlo, there is no mention of any visit to
8 a jeweller.
9 John Johnson was on the first Jonikal cruise and
10 recollects going ashore in Monte Carlo for about an
11 hour. It was, he said, a "stretch your legs
12 window-shopping trip". He did not remember Dodi and
13 Diana going into a jewellers and it would have stuck in
14 his mind if they had. Cross-examined by Mr Horwell, he
15 said there was no possibility of their having gone into
16 a jeweller on that cruise and they did not visit
17 St Tropez.
18 Wingfield and Rees-Jones were on the second Jonikal
19 cruise. Dodi and Diana went ashore and the bodyguards
20 went with them. This was when the boat put into
21 Monte Carlo on 23rd August. Dodi and Diana went ashore
22 with Wingfield, Delorm and Rees-Jones. Rees-Jones says
23 they had a steady walk but did not go into any shop.
24 The name of "Repossi" meant nothing to him.
25 There was, however, some evidence from Ritz

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1 employees about Dodi's interest in jewellery in
2 Monte Carlo. Dodi telephoned Franck Klein,
3 the president of the Ritz, around 18th or 19th August
4 1997, saying he needed to buy some jewellery; he was
5 getting engaged. Klein said he was sure Dodi was in
6 Monte Carlo at the time, but other evidence tells us
7 that Dodi was only there on 5th and 23rd August.
8 Klein says he spoke to Madame Ray of Van Cleef in
9 Monte Carlo just before he left to go on holiday to
10 Antibes. That inquiry does not seem to have come to
11 anything, but Roulet said Dodi had told him he had seen
12 a ring he liked which was in a window, near a platinum
13 watch. Roulet thinks he probably asked Franco Mora, who
14 speaks Italian, to make inquiries, and we have a fax
15 addressed to Klein, dated 23rd August, which prices
16 various items of jewellery at Repossi. Perhaps that can
17 be put on screen. That would tie in with Dodi having
18 seen something in Repossi's window when passing that
19 day.
20 Mora agrees he spoke to a saleswoman at Repossi. He
21 never asked about 'Dis-Moi Oui' rings and was never
22 asked to assist in getting an engagement ring. What his
23 evidence amounts to is that Klein wanted him to call
24 Repossi because somebody unnamed had seen something
25 there and wanted to know exactly what they had. He said

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1 Klein would not have told him if it was Dodi. He could
2 not remember Roulet being involved. After ten years you
3 cannot expect everyone's memory to be identical.
4 Roulet's account was that he received a phone call
5 from Klein saying Dodi wanted a ring he had seen with
6 Diana in Monte Carlo. This call was on 23rd August or
7 the day before. He wanted the ring brought to Paris.
8 He asked Mora to get in touch with Repossi. Mora came
9 back to him and said Repossi did not know which ring was
10 being referred to. Roulet called Klein and Klein said
11 Roulet should ask Dodi, which he did. Dodi gave a very
12 vague description, saying it was a simple ring in gold,
13 close to a platinum watch. The fax was a list of what
14 Mora was provided with. Mora made arrangements for the
15 items to be available in Paris. There was no mention of
16 any engagement ring.
17 Incidentally, Roulet said that on 26th July 1997, he
18 went with Dodi to another jeweller in Place Vendome
19 looking for a watch. They looked at lots but purchased
20 nothing. Diana was staying with Dodi in the Imperial
21 Suite in the Ritz at the time and Dodi gave her a watch.
22 Members of the jury, you have seen CCTV footage of
23 the two visits on the Saturday afternoon to Repossi
24 across the square. When Dodi and Diana arrived and
25 Roulet took them up to the Imperial Suite, Dodi told him

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1 he would let him know when he was ready to go to
2 Repossi. He marked the items on the Repossi brochure in
3 which he was interested. You have the marked brochure
4 in your bundle at section 3.5. I am not asking you to
5 look at it at the moment.
6 Dodi went with Roulet on the first visit, but no
7 purchase was made and nothing was taken back to
8 the Ritz. Five items were, however, set aside as
9 possibilities. Roulet stayed and made an inventory of
10 what Dodi had set aside, writing the prices on the back
11 of Mora's fax. He returned to the hotel and went up to
12 the Imperial Suite where he gave Dodi the prices. Dodi
13 was interested in a discount. Roulet went back to
14 Repossi to ask. At that point there was no settled view
15 of which piece of jewellery Dodi would buy or indeed
16 whether it would be a ring or a bracelet.
17 Roulet visited Repossi a second time, on this
18 occasion without Dodi. You may remember Mrs Repossi
19 showed him a ring she had previously forgotten to show
20 him. It was on her finger and was from the 'Dis-Moi
21 Oui' range.
22 Roulet returned to the Ritz with the two items shown
23 on [INQ0006248] which perhaps can be put up, and, he
24 thought, two or three others. When he arrived at the
25 Imperial Suite, Dodi told Roulet to keep his voice down

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1 and immediately said he would take the 'Dis-Moi Oui'
2 ring. The others were put in the Ritz safe. The other
3 ring shown on that piece of paper, the £60,000 ring
4 which was not chosen by Dodi, went back to Repossi on
5 3rd September 1997. Roulet handed that ring and, he
6 thought, others to Emanuele Gobbo, who was Repossi's
7 employee. After the crash, the 'Dis-Moi Oui' ring was
8 invoiced to Klein without, incidentally, any discount.
9 Finally I remind you of what Mr Cole said on
10 5th September at the press conference at Harrods. He
11 said:
12 "Incidentally, we did not leak the news of the ring
13 which Dodi gave to the Princess only hours before their
14 deaths. What that ring meant we shall probably never
15 know, and if the plant lasts for another thousand years,
16 I am quite sure that people will continue to speculate
17 about its significance."
18 If Dodi did indeed give the 'Dis-Moi Oui' ring to
19 Diana, one has to ask why it is that it ended up in
20 Dodi's briefcase in the wardrobe. If it was given to
21 Diana and if Mohamed Al Fayed was indeed told before
22 the crash that his son had given Diana an engagement
23 ring, why on earth was his trusted press spokesman
24 saying what he did five days after the crash? You have
25 heard the explanation given, that Cole was not fully

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1 informed. On the other hand, the one thing you may
2 think a press spokesman would do before making a
3 statement on behalf of his employer would be to make
4 sure that what he was saying accorded with what his
5 employer wanted.
6 Before leaving the subject of rings, I should remind
7 you that there was another ring, the Bulgari ring. That
8 ring can be seen in some photographs and I ask for them
9 to be put up now. Diana can be seen wearing it on
10 the fourth finger of her right hand on her arrival in
11 Paris.
12 I thought we had a colour photograph, but it seems
13 to have disappeared, members of the jury. There we are.
14 We will have to make do with a black and white one. It
15 does not look so good in black and white, I am afraid.
16 There is no suggestion by anyone, except possibly
17 Mr Faux, that this was an engagement ring. I will refer
18 to it in a little more detail when I come to Burrell.
19 Next topic: letters from Prince Philip.
20 Letters from Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh,
21 to Diana are said to be of importance because of what
22 the Duke said. If they were nasty letters, it is said
23 that they evidenced the Duke's attitude towards Diana
24 and thus point to a wish on his part or others on his
25 behalf to get rid of her.

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1 They were part of the so-called evidential planks on
2 which Mohamed Al Fayed sought to implicate the Duke in
3 a conspiracy to murder Diana and on which it is said
4 others may conceivably have acted on his behalf,
5 believing it to be his wish to get rid of her. It was
6 also suggested that because there were no letters from
7 the Duke found amongst the possessions of Diana, that
8 they could have been destroyed because of their
9 inflammatory content. Let us examine the state of the
10 evidence about the letters.
11 Copies of some letters came to light when
12 Rosa Monckton read about the inquests and realised that
13 what she had might be of potential significance.
14 Rosa Monckton, you will remember, met Diana through
15 Lucia Flecha de Lima and got to know her from about
16 February 1992. She says Mohamed Al Fayed's suggestion
17 that she befriended Diana in order to pass on
18 information to MI6 is absolute fantasy, although it is
19 accepted that someone close to her is connected to
20 the Secret Intelligence Service. She says she does not
21 think Diana knew of this.
22 If you accept Rosa Monckton's evidence and that of
23 others who knew them, she and Diana became close
24 friends. In the spring and summer of 1992, the marriage
25 of Prince Charles and Diana had hit very difficult

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1 times. Fortunately you do not have to explore
2 the rights and wrongs of why it broke down, but you may
3 think that the breakdown put Diana in a particularly
4 difficult position, having previously been within the
5 cocoon of the Royal Family but thereafter being on her
6 own. Because of who she was, she was unable to break
7 out and start a new life in the way she may have wanted.
8 Maggie Rae, her solicitor, said that she thought Diana
9 lived in a very odd environment and was lonely. She
10 felt like she was up against a big machine; she had
11 a small staff.
12 When the first letter arrived from the Duke in
13 June 1992, Diana got in touch with Rosa Monckton and
14 sought her help in drafting a reply. Rosa Monckton
15 explained that she drafted replies to a number of
16 letters from the Duke over that summer. She could see
17 how people might have got the wrong impression about the
18 content of the letters because Diana's first reaction on
19 receipt of a letter was generally to be upset, but they
20 were in fact very supportive and trying to help, she
21 said.
22 Diana had faxed a number of letters to Rosa Monckton
23 and she, in turn, provided me with copies of those
24 faxes. She also provided copies of drafts she had
25 compiled for Diana to use in answer and these she

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1 produced before you.
2 Following receipt of what Rosa Monckton had in her
3 possession, inquiries of the Palace revealed that the
4 Duke of Edinburgh had copies of the letters he had
5 written to Diana and also the original responses from
6 Diana. So we have had what Sir Miles Hunt-Davis
7 (the Duke's private secretary) tells us, on the strength
8 of what the Duke has told him, is the complete
9 correspondence between the Duke and Diana.
10 It lasted between 18th June and 4th October 1992.
11 My office asked for a complete set of correspondence and
12 Hunt-Davis in turn asked the Duke. Copies of the
13 letters from the Duke to Diana and the originals from
14 Diana to the Duke were provided to me. Because of the
15 personal nature of the letters and the fact that they
16 are irrelevant to the issues that you have to decide,
17 most of the contents have been redacted and you have
18 just seen the beginnings and the ends of the letters,
19 together with a few intermediate extracts. I say that
20 the rest of the content was irrelevant because it
21 provided no support whatsoever for the suggestion that
22 the correspondence was nasty, vituperative or
23 unpleasant.
24 It is common ground that these were not nasty
25 letters. Commander Jephson saw some of them and thought

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1 they were well intended. Paul Burrell saw them also.
2 He described them as "At times blunt, frank and quite
3 cutting, but they were nevertheless quite supportive".
4 He emphasised that the Duke was not a nasty man.
5 The question is whether there were any other letters
6 that were nasty and disparaging of Diana. Rosa says she
7 was not shown any other letters, and if there had been
8 any, she is sure that she would have been. And if, for
9 example, there had been one after the Martin Bashir
10 Panorama interview, Diana would have wanted her help to
11 answer it.
12 Burrell explained to you that correspondence between
13 the two covered a short period. We have seen six
14 letters from the Duke and five from Diana, and Burrell's
15 recollection was of a exchange of that order, all taking
16 place in 1992.
17 You will remember also that he was asked about
18 a quotation from one of them found in his book, which
19 was identical with a section that you had seen.
20 The suggestion that the Duke had written nasty letters
21 to the Princess has surfaced from time to time in
22 the press. Hunt-Davis explained that the normal
23 approach of the Duke of Edinburgh to inaccurate or
24 defamatory press material is to ignore it. That, you
25 may think, is a sensible approach for members of the

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1 Royal Family to adopt. They might otherwise be very
2 busy endlessly putting out denials and corrections.
3 But, uniquely, the Duke decided to put out a press
4 statement on 23rd November 2002, which I think we can
5 put up on the screen [INQ0058969]. He put this out
6 because of the untrue and indeed hurtful and scurrilous
7 allegations that were circulating.
8 In that press statement, the Duke located
9 the correspondence to 1992 (as have others who saw it)
10 and denied any suggestion that its tone was unpleasant.
11 But what has happened to the originals of those letters
12 from the Duke?
13 Rosa Monckton said she did not know where Diana kept
14 this very important correspondence, but she believed
15 that Diana did keep it because she wanted history to
16 know that she had tried to save her marriage.
17 The striking reference, as you will recall, by the Duke,
18 to his not being a marriage guidance counsellor gives
19 the flavour of what the correspondence was about.
20 There is some evidence of what happened to the
21 original letters from Prince Philip and indeed one from
22 the Queen towards the end of 1992, saying there was now
23 a need for Diana to get divorced. That letter from
24 the Queen followed Diana's interview with Martin Bashir
25 shown on Panorama. Diana gave the correspondence to

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1 Mishcon, who in turn gave it to Maggie Rae, who put
2 the letters in her safe at home.
3 Maggie Rae read the letters and recollects nothing
4 unpleasant about them. They were more in sorrow than in
5 anger. Diana asked for and was given the letters back
6 in 1997, not long before she died. Thereafter we pick
7 up the story with the wooden box, to which I shall come
8 shortly, but that shortly will be after our break. So
9 we will resume again at 5 past 3.
10 (2.50 pm)
11 (A short break)
12 (3.07 pm)
13 (Jury present)
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Members of the jury,
15 a correction. I think I said the Queen's letter was in
16 1992. It was after the Bashir interview. It was in
17 1995, not 1992.
18 Just before I come to the wooden box, what about
19 other letters? Mr Mansfield says that it is astonishing
20 that there is this small clip; there must have been
21 others. Where are they?
22 What evidence is there that there were any other
23 letters anyway? You may think very little. The only
24 person who claims to have seen any is Simone Simmons.
25 You will have to decide whether Simone Simmons is an

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1 honest witness and, if she is, whether her evidence is
2 reliable.
3 You may think that Simone Simmons believed what she
4 was telling you. Not everything she said supported
5 a conspiracy theory, but you may think that some of what
6 she described was rather weird or eccentric. Her
7 evidence is important from the viewpoint of conspiracy
8 theories and I shall deal with it in some detail in due
9 course. But as to the letters, she told us that at the
10 end of 1995, she and Diana were analysing handwriting
11 with the aid of a book on graphology.
12 Diana had quite a few letters from the Duke. She
13 drew Simone Simmons' attention to two that upset her.
14 She said that one was dated 1994 and the other,
15 probably, 1995. One was handwritten, one was typed.
16 One was on larger paper. Diana read out one of them,
17 mimicking Prince Philip's voice as she did so. Simone
18 read the other one. The Duke, she said, made cruel and
19 disparaging comments about the propriety of Diana's
20 conduct.
21 You did not hear the precise nature of the comments
22 because that was not relevant and might cause distress.
23 What is relevant is that if Simone Simmons' evidence is
24 correct, the observations were exceedingly inflammatory
25 and derogatory, cruel and disparaging, but there is no

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1 suggestion that they contained a threat of any kind.
2 Indeed, she went out of her way to emphasise to you that
3 the Royal Family would have done nothing to hurt Diana.
4 Simone does not know what happened to the letters
5 thereafter. She says Diana told her she gave
6 the originals to Bashir. It took a while to get them
7 back, if she ever did. She handed them over,
8 Simone Simmons explained, when her car was parked
9 next to Bashir's Land Rover in a car park somewhere in
10 the West End of London.
11 We have not heard from Bashir in person, but his
12 comments have been read to you. He has a vague
13 recollection of seeing some letters from the Duke of
14 Edinburgh. If there had been any strong language in
15 them, it is likely he would have referred to them in his
16 interview, he said, but he did not. He does not possess
17 and has not possessed any letters between current or
18 former members of the Royal Family.
19 Simone Simmons says she believes there was
20 correspondence with the Duke before and after 1992, but
21 that the derogatory letter was just one page.
22 The handwritten letter was the one Diana read out;
23 it was the smaller one, on headed paper. But, she says,
24 she was not really interested in the Duke's letters.
25 It was, she said, Prince Charles's letters that were

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1 fascinating. What interested the two of them was what
2 could be deduced from the handwriting.
3 Simone Simmons also gave evidence that the
4 Duchess of York had received nasty letters from
5 the Duke. Simone Simmons said she did not see any of
6 the nasty letters that Michael Cole claims Prince Philip
7 wrote to Sarah, Duchess of York, yet we heard
8 uncontroversial evidence from the Duchess of York that
9 she had never received any such letters. When Simone
10 was cross-examined by Mr Horwell, it was pointed out
11 that there were differences in the account that she had
12 given to the Mail and what she had said in the witness
13 box. Whether those differences help you to decide
14 whether she is truthful and accurate is a matter for
15 you.
16 You may think it is significant that, even on her
17 account, there was no threat to kill or harm Diana in
18 these letters. This evidence is said to go to motive,
19 but saying nasty or disparaging things against someone
20 is, you may think, some distance removed from a threat
21 to kill or injure. Taking her evidence at its highest,
22 does it really take the murder theory any further? But
23 perhaps, most critically, it seems clear enough that
24 Diana showed the correspondence both to her solicitors
25 and to Bashir in 1995. She clearly thought the

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1 correspondence important and, having seen it, I can well
2 understand why.
3 Had there been any anything of the nature suggested,
4 surely she would have been very keen that her solicitors
5 should be aware of it. After all, they acted for her in
6 connection with the formal separation in 1992 and then
7 the divorce proceedings which were completed in
8 the summer of 1996.
9 Similarly, when planning the Panorama interview with
10 Bashir, had there been any dynamite in the
11 correspondence from the Duke, would she not have shown
12 it to him? Although you may have difficulty with much
13 of the evidence from Burrell, if the Duke had addressed
14 nasty correspondence to Diana, is it not likely that she
15 would have shown it to him?
16 I turn next to the wooden box. Burrell says Diana
17 showed him Prince Philip's letters and her replies.
18 They were kept in a wooden box in her sitting room. If
19 that is true, she must have kept copies of her replies.
20 Prince Philip's letters were received, he said, over
21 four to five months in 1992, but he says he saw them in
22 1993. They appear to have been typed on distinctive
23 paper with an old-fashioned typewriter. They were
24 signed "Pa" and were not nasty or disparaging although,
25 as I have said, they contained what he described as

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1 constructive criticism.
2 He was right that they were signed "Pa", and as
3 I have indicated, there is an extract quoted in his book
4 which is the same as a passage that you have seen.
5 Significantly, you may think that he was quite clear
6 that the whole of the correspondence was completed in
7 1992 and was emphatic that, had there been more, he
8 would have seen it. He said that in the final years of
9 her life, he saw all Diana's correspondence. Had there
10 been anything of the sort described by Simone Simmons,
11 he would have seen it and he did not.
12 He also gave evidence that Diana herself had put out
13 a press statement as to the absence of nastiness from
14 Prince Philip. The statement said that the suggestion
15 that the Queen and the Duke had been anything other than
16 sympathetic and supportive was untrue.
17 Burrell says that he did not keep copies of
18 the Duke's correspondence or Diana's replies and does
19 not have the originals. Diana kept letters from the
20 Royal Family in a mahogany box. Burrell said he had not
21 seen the letters from the Duke since Diana's death.
22 Burrell gave evidence to you that he laboriously copied
23 out letters from the Duke and other members of the Royal
24 Family during his years of service with the Princess and
25 that is why he was able to quote from such material in

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1 his book.
2 You may remember that one of the quotations (not
3 from a letter from the Duke) even contained an error
4 which had apparently been faithfully copied by him. He
5 denied taking the letters or photocopying them. He did
6 tell you that he had burned what he had after he had
7 completed the book. Additionally, Mr Faux told you that
8 Burrell had burned correspondence from Buckingham Palace
9 not long after the collapse of his trial.
10 His apparent recollection, so many years after
11 the event, of the typeface and crest on some of the
12 letters is, you may think, fanciful, especially as he
13 accepted that the thought was planted by Benson and
14 Macnamara when they saw him before passing on his
15 details to my office.
16 It might be thought, however, that after that trial,
17 Burrell was keen to get rid of anything that others
18 might think he should not have. Whether it included
19 the originals of the Duke's correspondence, perhaps we
20 will never know for sure, but you may well find the
21 suggestion of staying up late to copy out what were,
22 after all, long letters rather hard to swallow.
23 Burrell was at Kensington Palace with Lady Sarah
24 McCorquodale when the box was discovered. They found
25 the key in a tennis racket cover and opened the box.

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1 Detective Inspector Milburn's note suggests
2 Prince Philip's letters were in the box. This is
3 contradicted by Lady Sarah, but she cannot account for
4 why Milburn recorded their existence in his note if she
5 did not tell him they were there. Burrell and
6 Lady Sarah put the box in the small service lift and he
7 last saw it when Diana's belongings were packed up and
8 sent to Althorp.
9 Whilst Mrs Shand Kydd apparently shredded a lot of
10 documents, it is said that she would not have destroyed
11 anything of historical significance, like the Duke's
12 letters. Any unshredded correspondence went to Althorp,
13 the Spencer family home. This did not include any
14 letters from the Duke of Edinburgh. Lady Sarah has
15 recently been through all the papers held at Althorp
16 and, apart from a letter of condolence to Diana on
17 the death of their father, there is nothing from
18 Prince Philip.
19 Milburn was involved in the Burrell prosecution. On
20 20th November 2000, he went to Lincolnshire to see
21 Lady Sarah because he wanted to establish ownership of
22 a dhow believed to have been stolen. The police had
23 information that Burrell had been seen at 3.00 am
24 removing items from Kensington Palace, including, you
25 will recall, a wooden box. Lady Sarah showed Milburn

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1 the box, but he did not look inside it. On Lady Sarah's
2 account it was empty. He was looking for a dhow, not
3 letters.
4 Lady Sarah's evidence was that she had asked Burrell
5 to look after the contents of the box for safe-keeping
6 the day they opened it. She expected him to take
7 the contents to his home, which was at that time only
8 200 yards away. The opening of the box would have been
9 in March 1998 at the earliest. She never saw the
10 contents of the box again, although she asked Burrell
11 for their return on two or three occasions later in
12 1998. He told her they were in packing boxes in
13 Cheshire and he would get them to her, but he never did.
14 When Milburn was in Lincolnshire in October 2000, he
15 made a list of what Lady Sarah told him were
16 the contents of the box and they included "Letters
17 Prince Philip" and "Correspondence in box taken by
18 Christmas". Lady Sarah said that she was 100 per cent
19 confident that there were no letters in the box when
20 it was opened and she did not tell Milburn there were
21 letters from Prince Philip in it. She asked Milburn to
22 ask Burrell for the contents of the box.
23 Lady Sarah explained that she took the empty box
24 home when the apartments were being cleared. It was in
25 the service lift and appeared to have been forgotten.

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1 It was a tiny lift and there was nothing except the box
2 in it. Burrell told Milburn he did not know where the
3 documents were and Lady Sarah had not asked for them
4 back.
5 So the question remains unsolved. What happened to
6 the originals of Prince Philip's letters? It is odd
7 that Milburn should have referred to them if they were
8 never in the box, but Lady Sarah is adamant that they
9 were not there.
10 You may think the most likely destination for those
11 letters is Burrell or perhaps they were shredded by
12 Diana's mother. Be that as it may, and wherever you
13 think they went, it is difficult to see that they
14 contain any expression of feeling on the part of the
15 Duke that advances the conspiracy argument.
16 There have been other suggestions that are said to
17 support the Duke's antipathy to Diana and to the
18 Al Fayeds. You will remember that some time was spent
19 in evidence with both Hunt-Davis and Lord Fellowes on
20 something called the "Way Ahead Group" and especially
21 its meeting on 20th July 1997. A newspaper report had
22 suggested that Diana was top of the agenda and that
23 a file on the Al Fayeds was produced by the security
24 services. It is true that Hunt-Davis thought it quite
25 likely that there was some discussion at the meeting of

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1 the perceived damage to the Royal Family.
2 I have seen both the agenda for that meeting and
3 the minutes. They were produced through Fellowes.
4 I have decided not to disclose their contents because
5 they were irrelevant; that is to say they provided no
6 support for the allegations contained in the newspaper
7 report. Diana was not on the agenda, neither were
8 the Al Fayeds.
9 You heard through intelligence witnesses that there
10 was no such file produced on the Al Fayeds. The minutes
11 said nothing about either; and for good measure the next
12 meeting was not scheduled for September (as suggested in
13 the newspaper article) but months later. The Way Ahead
14 material thus provided no support for the suggestion of
15 the Duke or any other member of the Royal Family being
16 hostile towards Diana or the Al Fayeds.
17 Then it was suggested that there may be some
18 significance in Diana ceasing to be styled "Her Royal
19 Highness" on her divorce in the summer of 1996. Quite
20 how that concerned the Duke of Edinburgh as opposed to
21 all other senior members of the Royal Family has never
22 been clear.
23 Fears and the Mishcon note.
24 It is said that Diana feared for her life and that
25 this has relevance to the collision. There is evidence

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1 of her fears and it is necessary to examine this
2 evidence in a little detail. Perhaps as good a starting
3 point as any is the evidence of Roberto Devorik,
4 the Argentinian with whom she was good friends.
5 He lived in London for 30 years until 1995 and met
6 Diana in 1981. Their contact was once or twice a month.
7 Like others, he fell out of favour with Diana from time
8 to time. You may think he was someone who had
9 considerable insight into Diana's character and who has
10 absolutely no axe to grind.
11 He said Diana went through highs and lows and at
12 times felt very alone. She had a quicksilver
13 temperament and could easily manipulate people, but
14 without malice. She had many unhappy periods in her
15 life and a lot of pressures. It was only when she was
16 down that she spoke about her preoccupation with death.
17 On 18th February 1992, he was at a film premiere.
18 The film involved marital infidelity. Diana said to
19 him, "My in-laws think I am mad and my husband agrees
20 with them and wants me in a home". On another occasion,
21 she told him she wanted to "leave the cage". Sometimes
22 she said things like "They want to kill me" and it was
23 very difficult to know if she was speaking seriously.
24 He said he may have said to her, "Who,
25 the Prince of Wales," knowing she would say "no" because

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1 she loved him.
2 Another time, at a party, she said she was sure that
3 Prince Philip was involved with the security services;
4 "After this, they are going to get rid of me". Devorik
5 said that was her point of view. They went downstairs
6 and the party continued. It was difficult to tell with
7 her if her remarks were in jest. On another occasion,
8 she said she would end up like Mary Queen of Scots and
9 be chopped.
10 Devorik said he travelled with her a lot but never
11 feared any irregularity, as he put it, or anything to
12 make him feel uncomfortable. Once, when travelling to
13 Italy, they were in the VIP lounge at the airport where
14 there was a picture of the Queen and the Duke of
15 Edinburgh. Diana looked at the picture of the Duke and
16 said, "He really hates me and would like to see me
17 disappear". But Devorik added that the Duke came in and
18 out of her favour quite often.
19 In the plane, she talked about being blown up and
20 said that they were slowly taking her kids -- letting
21 her know when she could have them. She said "They only
22 need me for official functions; then they drop me in
23 the darkness". He advised her to get legal advice.
24 He said that once she mentioned a conspiracy to harm
25 her to make way for Charles to marry Tiggy Legge-Bourke,

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1 but Devorik said that the description of these incidents
2 did not in themselves give a fair reflection of his
3 relationship with Diana and how she was.
4 You may think that Devorik was an honest witness who
5 knew Diana as well as most outside the family. You must
6 ask yourselves if his is an accurate account of events.
7 There is no obvious reason why they are not.
8 You will have to ask yourselves whether these
9 statements of Diana or some of them are a true account
10 of the way she really felt, but you will also bear in
11 mind Devorik's evidence that he never felt she was going
12 to be killed. He never felt any sense that there was
13 something wrong. Things were often said in
14 a lighthearted way.
15 He repeated three times in his evidence that he had
16 never felt any danger at all. He also said that one of
17 the things that really made Diana angry was that she
18 felt the divorce decision was finally made by virtually
19 everyone except herself: the Queen, Prince Charles,
20 the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, for
21 example.
22 I turn next to what Mohamed Al Fayed had to say on
23 this subject. One might have thought that if Diana had
24 really feared for her life, she would have mentioned it
25 to Mohamed Al Fayed at the time of the conversation with

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1 him shortly before the crash, when he said she told him
2 she was pregnant and engaged. Further, this, above all,
3 would have been the time when, if Mohamed Al Fayed's
4 contention is correct, Diana's security should have been
5 stepped up. Yet you may recollect that Mohamed Al Fayed
6 said in evidence that, when he told Klein, soon after
7 the deaths, "they've killed him", he said that that
8 conclusion was based entirely on what Diana had told him
9 that summer.
10 His evidence was that Diana had expressed fears to
11 him during the summer. Those fears related to
12 Prince Philip and Prince Charles. He went on to say
13 that the two of them, in Balmoral, organised an
14 assassination in Paris using MI6. It was, he said,
15 Prince Philip who ruled the country behind the scenes.
16 No doubt Diana did talk to Mohamed Al Fayed during
17 the time she was on holiday and you may think it is
18 a fair inference that she said something about her
19 relationship with the Royal Family. However, you have
20 only got Mohamed Al Fayed's word that she expressed
21 fears about Prince Philip and Prince Charles and it is
22 for you to decide on the reliability of Mohamed
23 Al Fayed's evidence. If he thought there was anything
24 in the fears, why were there only two bodyguards
25 provided by him?

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1 What did Burrell have to say about this topic? He
2 claims to have been very close to Diana. He says not
3 everyone knew everything, but he was pretty well
4 informed. You will probably want to take with a pinch
5 of salt many things that he said in evidence because of
6 the inconsistences and, you may think, lies in what he
7 told you, but that does not mean that nothing that he
8 said can be of any value.
9 He said Diana and Prince Philip had a mutual
10 understanding at the end of her life. She and Prince
11 Charles were on very cordial terms at that stage too.
12 We have documentary evidence of Diana's fears in
13 the form of the Burrell note. Burrell has given
14 different accounts of how it came into his possession
15 and there may be some doubt about its date, the document
16 itself being undated, but the wording of the note is
17 there for you to see.
18 Burrell said he had conversations with Diana in
19 which she expressed similar sentiments, although there
20 were no other similar notes or letters. Burrell told
21 you he had no knowledge of the Mishcon note. Diana told
22 Burrell she was a problem and the Royal Family did not
23 know what to do with her. Again you may think there is
24 some truth in that.
25 It was put to Burrell and he agreed -- and you may

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1 think there is a good deal of force in this too -- that
2 if he had handed the Burrell note over to Buckingham
3 Palace, the Princess's fears would never have been made
4 public, not least because the Mishcon note would
5 probably have never seen the light of day. But you do
6 have evidence that Diana expressed fears to various
7 people, and it is up to you to decide what to make of
8 them.
9 Finally, Burrell said that if he had taken Diana's
10 note seriously, he would have taken steps to urge her to
11 protect herself.
12 Michael Gibbins, Diana's comptroller or private
13 secretary, said that Diana never discussed private
14 matters with him. Colin Tebbutt, her security driver,
15 said he had never heard her express fears for her life.
16 Rita Rogers, you may remember, say she passed on
17 information and predictions she had received from
18 the spirit world. It was suggested that she was
19 responsible for putting ideas into Diana's head.
20 Indeed, Rita said she was confident of the accuracy of
21 the information she was passing on. It was she who
22 raised the subject of Diana's brakes having been
23 tampered with and she who was worried about the Audi.
24 However, she said the subject of abdication, Tiggy and
25 Camilla, mentioned in the Mishcon note, did not come

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1 from her and nor did the information in the Burrell
2 note.
3 Simone Simmons said Diana told her on many occasions
4 that she was going to be bumped off. Once her brakes
5 failed in the rush hour and she was sure they had been
6 tampered with. After that, she sent Simone Simmons
7 a note saying, "If anything happens, MI5/MI6 will have
8 done it". Her brakes were tested and, according to
9 Simone Simmons, the problem was heavy wear.
10 Simone Simmons destroyed the note.
11 Simone also referred to a phone call Diana received
12 at Kensington Palace. She, Simone, put her head against
13 the receiver and listened for two or three minutes.
14 Diana was being criticised for involvement in the
15 landmine campaign. The caller said, "Accidents can
16 happen" and Diana just said, "I am going". Diana said
17 the caller was Nicholas Soames MP and she would sort it
18 out in her own way. Soames denies any such
19 conversation. Was Simone describing a threat or
20 a criticism? Did such a conversation take place at all?
21 At any rate, there was no mention of the conversation in
22 her first book.
23 There are some weird features about Simone's
24 evidence. She specialises in energy healing and says
25 she cleaned Diana's flat of bad energy. She had many

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1 long telephone conversations with Diana -- one lasting
2 for ten hours. Simone Simmons said she was still
3 communicating with Diana. She had given her a lot of
4 information, but it was difficult to talk about it.
5 In November 1996, Simone had a premonition about
6 a crash in a Mercedes. It was, she said, an accident
7 that was not an accident. The Mercedes was dark blue
8 and there were four people in it. She had a vision of
9 a small explosion at the rear. She used to telephone
10 Diana saying something was going to happen. However,
11 there was no contact between them after June 1997 as
12 they were not speaking.
13 Fears were never discussed with Rodney Turner,
14 the director of Jack Barclays and a friend of Diana. He
15 said the Burrell note came as a bombshell to him. Diana
16 did, however, jokingly say to him, in 1996, "It is not
17 the IRA after me, it is my husband".
18 Steve Davis was Diana's personal chauffeur until
19 March or April 1997. She never expressed any fears to
20 him about cars being tampered with. He did the normal
21 checks anyway. He never heard of a brake failure nor
22 was he asked to check the brakes.
23 Colin trimming, who was one of Diana's protection
24 officers, said she never spoke to him about fears, nor
25 was he aware of any specific threat. On the other side

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1 of the coin, she wanted her protection removed,
2 something that happened gradually with time and was
3 strongly resisted by the Metropolitan Police.
4 Ken Wharfe never saw any correspondence with
5 the Duke of Edinburgh. Diana never made derogatory
6 remarks about him and, indeed, thought he was quite
7 a good father-in-law. She freely said he was
8 surprisingly supportive of her. Wharfe said he thought
9 Diana was viewed by the Palace as a serious and
10 escalating problem. She outshone the rest of the Royal
11 Family and irritated Prince Charles. Wharfe was
12 sceptical of Diana seeing therapists. He thought this
13 might be where she had got the idea of being killed on
14 the road.
15 The Mishcon note, which we will now put up and is
16 anyway in your bundle, has been a central feature in
17 the evidence. It arose out of a meeting at
18 Kensington Palace on 30th October 1995. Mishcon is no
19 longer alive and cannot throw any light on the issues
20 that have arisen surrounding it, but you have heard from
21 others.
22 Present at the meeting, apart from Mishcon and
23 Diana, were Maggie Rae, Sandra Davis and
24 Patrick Jephson. You have the note and may like to look
25 at it again at your leisure. Maggie Rae saw Diana

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1 subsequently. She had a pervasive belief that "they"
2 wanted to put her aside, but she would not say who
3 "they" were. She also said several times that the Crown
4 should skip a generation.
5 Maggie Rae saw Diana on a number of occasions in
6 connection with the divorce, and it is pretty obvious
7 that, in the autumn of 1995, Diana's feelings were
8 running high. Maggie took the same view as
9 Lord Mishcon. There was no evidence and she did not see
10 that what was worrying Diana was possible.
11 While Diana was serious about her fears, they were
12 something she would mention rather than a dominating
13 theme of her conversation. Maggie Rae never asked Diana
14 who she thought was going to kill her. Whilst she
15 accepted that it was a possibility that there had been
16 vitriolic letters from Prince Philip which Diana had not
17 wanted to show her, Maggie thought Diana believed what
18 she said, but that it was unrealistic. It was at
19 a particularly low point in her life.
20 Sandra Davis also attended the meeting on
21 30th October 1995. The purpose of the meeting was to
22 introduce Maggie Rae and Sandra Davis to Diana for
23 continuity. She too said this was not the only occasion
24 on which Diana spoke of Prince Charles not inheriting
25 the throne and Diana being got rid of. She did not say

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1 who was trying to get rid of her. Sandra was of
2 the opinion that Diana was, as she put it, deadly
3 serious about her fears, but she nevertheless never
4 mentioned the source of her fears.
5 Jephson was Diana's private secretary from 1990
6 until 1996. He said that Diana consulted astrologers
7 and sometimes put faith in their predictions. It was an
8 astrologer who had predicted that Charles would never be
9 king and who also predicted a helicopter crash. He said
10 that she saw plots everywhere and was also preoccupied
11 with Tiggy Legge-Bourke whom she believed was pregnant.
12 There is a conflict between Jephson's evidence and
13 that of Davis. Jephson says that when Diana believed
14 that her brakes had been tampered with, he got Davis to
15 check them but nothing was found.
16 Jephson could not remember the meeting giving rise
17 to the Mishcon note, but he did not dispute the note.
18 He did remember a private word with Mishcon afterwards.
19 He agreed he may have said that he half-believed Diana.
20 He said he was more concerned with the fact that these
21 things were being said than about their content. He
22 wished to know why she was saying them. By saying what
23 she was, she was playing into the hands of the Royal
24 Establishment, who were suggesting that she was mentally
25 fragile and a liability to the Royal Family. An open

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1 expression of disbelief on his part might have prevented
2 her sharing future concerns with him.
3 He could not find any reliable evidence of her fears
4 and was confident that her reactions were not those of
5 someone who truly feared for her life. She gave no
6 indication what her reliable sources were. She was
7 a complex individual in a unique and difficult situation
8 and he did not really know what was making her say these
9 things.
10 Lady Sarah McCorquodale says that Diana did not
11 speak to her of her fears or of an accident or of Tiggy
12 Legge-Bourke. Her true mood was not conveyed in
13 the Mishcon note. You will remember that Lady Sarah
14 drew our attention to a photograph from around the time
15 of the note showing the three sisters sitting happily in
16 the back of a car and laughing. Unlike Patrick Jephson,
17 she did not even half-believe what Diana said. She
18 pointed out that Diana had huge mood swings. Finally,
19 on this topic, Fellowes said that he never saw any
20 animosity on the part of the Duke of Edinburgh towards
21 Diana.
22 You will have to consider whether Diana did truly
23 fear for her life, if she did, whether such fears were
24 justified and, if they were justified, whether they
25 amount to any evidence from which you can draw the

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1 inference that somebody may have wanted to kill or harm
2 her.
3 Bugging and surveillance.
4 It is argued that the issue of bugging and
5 surveillance is linked to Diana's fears about her
6 physical security.
7 There is no doubt that Diana believed her
8 communications were being monitored, nor was she alone
9 in this belief. Let's look at the evidence.
10 Going back to 1989, it is established that a phone
11 call between James Gilbey and Diana, who was at
12 Sandringham, was intercepted. This has become known as
13 "Squidgygate". Who were responsible remains, to this
14 day, unclear. We spent some time looking at
15 the evidence. You heard in particular from Fellowes and
16 Sir John Adye, the head of GCHQ at the time.
17 Various documents were produced, including records
18 of what was said by the Prime Minister in the House of
19 Commons. You may think that all of the evidence that
20 you have heard and read indicates that whoever it was
21 that listened to the phone call, it was not the security
22 services.
23 There was a lot of time spent in our considering
24 whether there was an investigation into this and, if
25 not, why not. Although the call took place in 1989, it

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1 did not become public until the latter half of 1992 and
2 the documents we looked at related to the first months
3 of 1993. There was also the interception, also in late
4 1989, of a call between Prince Charles and
5 Camilla Parker Bowles, which became public at the end of
6 1992 or early 1993.
7 You have heard about the various meetings that took
8 place to consider what should be done. Mr Mansfield's
9 point was that criminal offences had been committed and
10 there should have been a criminal investigation at
11 the very least, if not a criminal prosecution. But it
12 had happened some years before and was it really in
13 anyone's interests to go down that road?
14 It was pointed out that the four participants in
15 the telephone calls no doubt preferred that what had
16 happened in the past should be allowed to rest and what
17 was important was that something similar should not
18 recur. That certainly was the way Fellowes saw it.
19 You will remember Prince Charles's reservations and
20 the decision of the Home Secretary that there should be
21 no criminal investigation. You may think that
22 a detailed investigation now of what happened in 1989
23 and 1992 is of little assistance in assessing who was
24 responsible for a crash in 1997.
25 Among those witnesses who told us Diana believed her

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1 phones were bugged was Lady Sarah, whom she told that
2 she had had her apartment swept twice. Grahame Harding
3 was told by the Duchess of York that Diana thought she
4 was being watched. Harding was asked for his assistance
5 and he met Diana at Kensington Palace in 1994 and did,
6 he said, four sweeps, which he described as four limited
7 sweeps in four months. He was never asked again.
8 His equipment detected an electronic signal
9 indicating a possible bugging device behind the wall in
10 Diana's bedroom. However, there was no disturbance in
11 the wall and he did not know what was behind the wall.
12 The wall divided Diana's room from a room occupied by
13 Prince Charles. It could have been perfectly innocent,
14 but he believed at the time that it was a device. A day
15 or so later the signal had gone.
16 Ken Wharfe was, for a time, Diana's bodyguard, and
17 he told us that in May 1993 Kensington Palace was
18 checked for bugs. Four people came to Kensington Palace
19 under the guise of carpet cleaners for the purpose of
20 debugging the premises. This had, he said, been
21 arranged by the butler on the recommendation of
22 the Duchess of York. The four men were arrested when
23 they asked to see the mainframe computer of the
24 communications network. Wharfe said that Diana told him
25 on several occasions that she felt that she and others

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1 in the Royal Family were being monitored but he did not
2 see the subject as a really serious issue.
3 The carpet sweepers found nothing. Wharfe assumed
4 there would have been an investigation into Squidgygate.
5 Indeed, Diana told him that the Queen had asked for an
6 investigation. He thought there was a possibility, but
7 it was only his surmise, that GCHQ were involved in
8 Squidgygate. Another possibility was the media, but he
9 favoured the former.
10 Wharfe was on the look-out for evidence to support
11 allegations of bugging but he did not find any. He
12 thought GCHQ would be monitoring members of the Royal
13 Family because of heightened IRA activity. Well,
14 members of the jury, again, assumption and belief is one
15 thing: evidence is another. He said his information
16 about conversations being routinely recorded came from
17 Diana and he assumed it to be correct.
18 Then there was Jephson. He said he was "quite
19 aware" Diana's communications might be monitored by
20 the security services and shared Wharfe's belief that
21 members of the Royal Family might be routinely
22 monitored, but he had no specific evidence. It seemed,
23 he said, quite sensible to advise her that her calls
24 might be monitored by the security services among
25 others. It was his assumption that they would be

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1 interested from the point of view of her protection. He
2 did not believe there was any sinister plot with
3 Squidgygate but thought her communications might be
4 being monitored by the security services. He advised
5 her that her calls might be overheard and you will
6 remember the evidence that she changed her mobile
7 telephones regularly. Friends who were out of favour
8 did not get the new number.
9 Jephson was aware of her premises being swept, but
10 was not officially notified. He learned about it
11 unofficially. He said that Diana saw plots everywhere.
12 She believed her brake lines were cut and also was
13 preoccupied with Tiggy Legge-Bourke. She told him in
14 December 1995 that she believed Tiggy was pregnant. At
15 the conclusion of his evidence, Jephson summed the
16 position up, saying that in advising Diana to be careful
17 about what she said on the phone, he was thinking as
18 much of casual eavesdroppers as of any organised
19 monitoring scheme.
20 Then there was Burrell. Diana believed she was
21 being bugged and he believed it too. He thought it
22 highly likely that people were watching her and
23 listening to her.
24 Mr Benson, Mohamed Al Fayed's general counsel and
25 legal adviser, said that he had no doubt whatsoever that

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1 Diana's movements and telephone calls would have been
2 constantly monitored. This information, he said, came
3 from persons in or connected with the security services.
4 You will remember that he was cross-examined about that.
5 Raine Spencer said that Diana felt her phones were
6 being bugged and, likewise, her home. She always seemed
7 very conscious that she was being watched.
8 On 18th October 1994, one of a series of meetings
9 was held with Deputy Assistant Commissioner Meynell,
10 the head of the Royalty Protection Group at the time.
11 We have a note of the meeting. You may think it is very
12 difficult to be confident of recollections about what
13 happened over 13 years ago, but the note, which was
14 counter-signed by Condon, having subsequently discussed
15 the meeting with Meynell, records that Diana knew her
16 phones were being tapped and she was certain the same
17 applied to her vehicle.
18 She had proof of tapping because she had set traps,
19 she said, on four occasions and got what she described
20 as "the necessary evidence". But the problem was that
21 she would not let them have the evidence or agree to
22 anything being done. There was a suggestion that this
23 was a tease on the police and that her bluff was being
24 called. It is pretty clear that she was something of an
25 ongoing problem to the police, who wanted her to keep

144
1 her protection whilst Diana wanted the freedom to be
2 without it.
3 There is a note of a meeting with Meynell back on
4 13th September 1993, when she wanted the removal
5 immediately of four protection officers. There was
6 another meeting on 1st February 1994, the record of
7 which says she valued her freedom and could not be
8 persuaded to change her mind. Condon said that it was
9 his wish that she had protection, and if she had had it
10 in Paris, three lives would not have been tragically
11 lost. It suited her not to have protection, but she was
12 not prepared to give specific reasons.
13 In 1994/1995 and in 1996, when the IRA ceasefire
14 broke down, the police very stridently suggested that
15 it was a good time to reintroduce her security. Condon
16 suspected that she thought the police were not on her
17 side. In late 1993 and early in 1994, Lord Condon and
18 Fellowes were in almost daily touch about it.
19 You may have detected some ongoing tension between
20 Diana and the police. Meynell had a clear recollection,
21 and he was quite adamant about it, that he instructed
22 a Polsa team, from the Palace of Westminster, to do
23 a search at Kensington Palace. However, there is no
24 surviving document to corroborate this and nor is there
25 any real clarity when such a search may have been

145
1 carried out.
2 All this, you may think -- but it is a matter for
3 you -- is hardly surprising bearing in mind the years
4 that have passed, and anyway, where does it take you?
5 After the October 1994 meeting, Condon briefed
6 the Home Secretary, having talked the position through
7 with Meynell. The position was clear, that Diana was
8 not prepared to assist. The police could only help,
9 Condon said, if she was prepared to let them. Finally,
10 the Metropolitan Police were not authorised, nor did
11 Condon seek such an authorisation, to intrude into
12 Diana's life.
13 Hasnat Khan said in his statement to the
14 Metropolitan Police that he did not believe his calls
15 were being bugged and that he had no evidence that
16 the authorities had any interest in him. He seems to
17 have been the one person who did not jump to conclusions
18 and make assumptions.
19 Members of the jury, I think that is enough for
20 today. Giving you some kind of progress report, I am
21 very nearly halfway through what I have to say to you in
22 summing-up, although there are parts of what we are
23 going to go through tomorrow that will have to be taken
24 rather more slowly because of the particular detail in
25 them. That includes some of the toxicology evidence and

146
1 also evidence with regard to the collision.
2 I think I shall have finished, if my present
3 estimate is accurate, pretty early on Wednesday morning
4 and you will then be retiring to consider your verdicts.
5 Would you please now retire? You can go home,
6 obviously, but please bear in mind the warning that
7 I have given you. Be particularly careful not to talk
8 to anybody about the case and bear in mind the warning
9 that I have given to you about talking to each other in
10 small numbers, other than the jury as a whole. We will
11 continue tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.
12 (4.00 pm)
13 (The hearing was adjourned until 10.00 am
14 on Tuesday, 1st April 2008)
15

147
1 INDEX
2
3 Statement of MR MARTIN SMITH (read) .............. 3
4
5 Further statement of MR MARTIN SMITH ............. 5
6 (read)
7
8 Further statement of MR MARTIN SMITH ............. 7
9 (read)
10
11 SUMMING-UP ....................................... 9
12

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