Inquest to be held into Dodi Fayed death
The announcement of an inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales’s lover Dodi Fayed is the latest development in a six-year saga which has followed the fatal Paris road crash.
Public inquiries into the deaths of Diana and Dodi have been delayed by lengthy police investigations and a series of legal complications.
A two-year French inquiry into the deaths concluded that the crash was caused by Henri Paul, the chauffeur who also died in the accident, driving too fast while under the influence of drink and drugs.
Dodi’s father, Mohamed al Fayed, has never accepted the findings of Judge Herve Stephan and has carried out his own investigation into the crash.
He believes Diana was probably pregnant with Dodi’s child and that the couple were planning to marry.
He argues they were assassinated by the British Secret Service because the establishment could not contemplate such a union.
Mr al Fayed has made several bids to take part in any inquiry into the deaths. In July 2000 he lost a High Court case when he demanded an inquest which dealt with Diana and Dodi together.
British law currently requires that an inquest should be conducted in every case where a body is returned to Britain following a death abroad.
But former coroner for the Royal Household Dr John Burton called the law “ludicrous” and long resisted calls for an inquest into Diana’s death, saying it would merely be an expensive rerun of the original French inquiry.
It was always thought that Dr Burton did not want to put Diana’s family through the trauma of yet another airing of the events of that night.
Dr Burton has said: “The aim of an inquest is to identify the cause of death.
“But in this case all the evidence was collected in France and any inquest would just be a forum for different people’s views.”
Hopes of an inquest into the Princess’s death were raised following the appointment of a new coroner for the Royal Household, Michael Burgess, in 2002.
It would have been the first inquest into a fatal accident involving a member of the Royal Family to be held since 1972, when Prince William of Gloucester was killed in an air crash.
In his role as Surrey coroner, Mr Burgess will head the inquest into Dodi’s death later this year.
