Al Fayed in astonishing bid to force Queen to give evidence at Diana inquest

Andy Sullivan
UK Daily Mail
Tuesday May 15, 2007

Mohamed Al Fayed wants the Queen to be questioned as part of the Princess Diana inquest, it has emerged.

The Harrods owner has already demanded that Prince Charles and Prince Philip give evidence to the full inquest, which starts in October.

Now he wants the Queen to be "directly approached" and questioned over her private conversations with Diana's butler, Paul Burrell.

Mr Al Fayed, whose son Dodi died alongside the princess in the Paris car crash in 1997, believes they were murdered in an establishment conspiracy.

His lawyers made their request in the High Court, in the final preliminary hearing with Baroness Butler-Sloss as coroner.

In 2002, evidence from the monarch helped clear Mr Burrell of the theft of scores of the princess's personal treasures.

While he was on trial at the Old Bailey, the Queen remembered a conversation they had a few weeks after the crash, in which he told her he had taken some papers for safekeeping.

She confided in Prince Charles, who informed the police, and the trial collapsed. Mr Burrell subsequently claimed the Queen had told him: "There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge."

The Al Fayed legal team received 11,000 pages of evidence last week from Lord Stevens's Operation Paget inquiry into the deaths.

But Mr Al Fayed's barrister Michael Mansfield QC told the coroner that any references to Mr Burrell and "any conversations with Her Majesty in various statements" had been edited.

He said: "No one appears to have approached Her Majesty about the contents of these conversations.

"The inquiries which we suggest should be made...is Her Majesty being directly approached to see if there was evidence of conversations as alleged by Mr Burrell."

Baroness Butler-Sloss said she had ordered all references to the Queen to be blacked out. She told the hearing:

"So far as Her Majesty is concerned I don't know what the protocol is and I think that it is important that whatever the protocol may be should be observed.

"Therefore I have redacted the conversation that Her Majesty is supposed to have said. Her Majesty to be approached - I think that is probably unheard of.

"I think we have to tread very carefully in relation to the sovereign because she is going to be in a different position from everyone else."

The decision on which witnesses will be called will be made by her successor, Lord Justice Scott Baker.

Lady Butler-Sloss's appearance ended on a sour note, as she accused Mr Mansfield and other lawyers of dictating terms of the inquest.

She also complained of "adversarial and quite aggressive letters" she had received from solicitors for the Harrods boss, the Ritz hotel and Henri Paul, the driver of Diana and Dodi's limousine, who also died in the crash.

"I do feel a little bit as if I am the one in the dock," she told Mr Mansfield.

The 73-year-old, the former head of the High Court's family division, stood down because she felt she was not up to the task of handling the case.

There are fears this could further hamper the much delayed inquest.

Note: Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s butler, was tried for the theft some of the Princess’s possessions. He claimed that he had been given these by the Princess for safekeeping for her sons. Before he was charged, his house was raided by police.

Towards the end of the trial, in which millions of pounds had been spent, the Queen, so the story goes, suddenly remembered that she had indeed had a conversation with Mr Burrell in which he told her that he had in his possession some of Diana’s effects. The Queen told Prince Charles, who told the Police, and, after millions of pounds had been spent, the charges against Burrell were dropped.

Following the trial, there was much speculation over whether Mr Burrell iwas in possession of what Diana called “the crown jewels” - a mahogany box containing a series of letters from Prince Philip, a signet ring belonging to James Hewitt and a tape recording of a Royal valet, George Smith, in which he alleges he was raped by a trusted Royal aide.

Mr Smith also claims on the tape that he witnessed an incident at a palace between a member of the Royal Family and a servant - an allegation he has said would cause irreparable damage to the monarchy.

The butler has always denied he knows the whereabouts of the contents of the mahogany box, which mysteriously disappeared after Diana’s death in 1997.

My question is this: Was that what the police were really after when they raided Burrell’s home? Why did Burrell’s lawyers not present Burrell’s claims relating to a conversation to the Queen as part of Burrell’s defence at the beginning of the trial? What was it that suddenly jolted her majesty’s memory, leading to the trial’ collapse?