Ian Hislop on BBC Question Time - -

The second fact is that Diana herself thought that she would be murdered in a car accident, and several people have gone on record confirming that she was threatened. James Hewitt had threats by telephone and by visits from men in grey. Diana's faith-healer friend gave a full interview to a Sunday newspaper where she said that Diana told her that she'd been receiving threatening calls, and then in her very presence Diana received one of these calls, gestured her to come to the phone so that she herself could hear a man's voice threatening that it wouldn't be 'safe' or 'good for her health' to continue the relationship with Hasnat Khan, the Muslim surgeon. In another newspaper report a friend of the surgeon, who owned a London club, said that Khan had told him that Khan had been warned off Diana by men in grey suits. All this can easily be checked out.

"Senior palace courtiers are ready to advise the Queen not to renew prestigious royal warrants for Harrods when they come up for review in February ... It would be a huge blow to the ego of store owner Mohamed Al Fayed - and would infuriate Diana, who was yesterday understood to be still with Dodi aboard his yacht, near the Italian island of Sardinia. But the Royal Family are furious about the frolics of Di, 36, and Dodi, 41, which they believe have further undermined the monarchy... Prince Philip, in particular, has made no secret as to how he feels about his daughter-in-law's latest man, referring to Dodi as an 'oily bed-hopper'... At Balmoral next week, the Queen will preside over a meeeting of The Way Ahead Group where the Windsors sit down with their senior advisers to discuss policy matters. MI6 has prepared a special report on the Egyptian-born Fayeds which will be presented at the meeting. A friend of the Royals said yesterday: 'Prince Phillip has let rip several times recently about the Fayeds at a dinner party, during a country shoot, and while on a visit to close friends in Germany ... He's been banging on about his contempt for Dodi and how he is undesirable as a future stepfather to William and Harry. Diana has been told in no uncertain terms about the consequences should she continue the relationship with the Fayed boy. Options must include possible exile, although that would be very difficult as when all is said and done, she is the mother of the future King of England.' And Dodi has told Diana what he has told many of his other beautiful girlfriends in the past: 'It's my father's store and you can have what you want. Charge it to my account and I'll just sign the bill.' But now the Royal Family may decide it's time to settle up."

If the car accident was arranged deliberately, then the driver would need to have looked drunk, and there would have to be a CCTV blackout of the whole accident. The day after the crash French media reported Henri Paul had consumed 'grossly excessive quantities of alcohol' and that the speedometer of the car had jammed at 121mph - all nonsense and not denied by the authorities at the time (just like the Stockwell shooting by police of the Brazilian man, where the authorities failed to deny he had a padded jacket and vaulted the ticket barriers). A few days later, on Sept 9th there were reports that Henri Paul's flat contained shelves full of spirits and wine, tables full of bottles of vodka, Martini and fortified wines, a kitchen with opened bottles of Ricard and American bourbon. In fact, two days after the crash Police had searched the flat and found one bottle of champagne and one bottle of Martini. Additional FACTS, Hislop, are that in November 2006 Lord Stevens told Henri Paul's parents that their son WASN'T drunk. Then the Paget enquiry seems to have been suddenly wound up, blaming Henri Paul that he WAS drunk in December 2006. It is a FACT that practically no witnesses state that Henri Paul seemed in any way drunk that night, or remember him drinking the quantities he was supposed to have drunk, and it is a FACT that he didn't look drunk on CCTV, and he tied his laces with agility.

The fourth fact is that Henri Paul's blood samples look like they may have been mixed up with someone else's. Certainly, the post-mortem ended up being a SUPREME botch, and frankly, I don't believe any court can attach any value to any medical or scientific conclusions drawn from anything resulting from any tests on Henri Paul's body whatsoever. Blood samples contained such excessive CO levels that if they belonged to Henri Paul he would have been feeling extremely ill that night and would have had difficulty just standing. How can this unprofessional mess have happened in such a high profile case? How likely is such a mix up to be accidental, Ian Hislop? It's a total farce!!

The first post-mortem on Henri Paul was carried out by a Professor Lecomte on 31 August 1997. The documents from it still don't add up to this day. Three samples or five? Different accounts are given at different times. Procedures don't seem to have been followed. Blood samples from this autopsy showed abnormally high levels of carbon monoxide in the blood - carboxyhaemoglobin of 20.7%. Four days later, a second post-mortem was carried out, and this time blood was taken from a different area. These femoral blood samples - from the upper thigh - showed still high carbon monoxide - over 12%. These high levels, particularly the 20.7% figure, have cast doubt on the analysis of all the samples. Fayed's lawyers and experts have been calling for explanation of these figures for some years, and nothing convincing has been forthcoming. But then, suddenly, in 2005 Operation Paget claims to have cleared up the mystery:

The Paget Report states that it wasn't until 2005 that they had this new information. Apparently, they discovered a piece of paper ('D1323') that originates from 9th September 1997 on which Professor Lecomte clarifies that in that first autopsy which gave the 20.7% figure, blood wasn't taken from the heart (as is normal practice and as was actually labelled on the samples, p275 'sang cardiaque'), because there were only a few drops of blood in the heart - not enough; therefore blood was scooped out of the chest cavity - the 'haemothorax'. So we have to believe that all the samples at the time labelled 'sang cardiaque' - 'heart blood' - were wrongly labelled and not corrected, and we also have to believe that no record, not even a little handwritten note, was made anywhere in the autopsy report of this change of normal procedure, of this change of sampling site. Why bother writing anything in the report, making any medical notes or scientific observations at all, when you can't even write the equivalent of these nine words: 'Insufficient blood in heart, samples taken from chest cavity'? Paget should have reproduced the autopsy report in full. Then we would see that it is a long document. Are we to believe that Professor Lecomte made this report in this detail, but didn't note that the heart only had a few drops of blood therefore she sampled from the much less satisfactory chest cavity instead?

Heart blood is relatively pure and gives accurate readings as opposed to chest cavity blood, which could be contaminated. Paget says that they found out about the heart blood really being chest cavity blood only in 2005, and they then told Dr Pepin, the main French expert working on the samples, in 2006! This was news to him! ("The blood taken on 31st Aug 1997 at post mortem was an 'intra-cardiac sample'" says Dr Pepin in his report of 9th Sept 1997, p.275) And all these years, Fayed has had a string of his own experts trying to explain the 20.7%, and now (p328-339) Paget says, "Ahh! But all these years they didn't know that the blood wasn't from the heart! It was from the chest cavity - this explains how it got contaminated!" Of course, this is nonsense! That blood was from the heart, not the chest cavity. The bottles were labelled 'sang cardiaque' - heart blood. These labels were photographed at the time as a record (p275). The inquest must accept the samples as they were labelled. The autopsy was carried out by Professor Lecomte, a highly qualified and experienced expert, Head of the IML - the top person. Normal procedure is to take blood samples from the heart (p270). No note was made of where the samples were taken from in the autopsy report - implying normal procedures had been followed during the autopsy; and then at the end of the autopsy, the samples were actually labelled as heart blood, unusually, by Professor Lecomte herself (p270, p273) - because she was taking extra care. The Paget Report also states (p299):

Remember, the spotlight on this accident was intense. This would have been by far the biggest case that Professor Lecomte would have ever dealt with. Paget states that Commandant Mules (p273) said that Professor Lecomte specifically requested that he be present 'because of his experience and professionalism and because they had worked together on important cases on many previous occasions'. Paget continues 'He stated that normally in the case of fatal road traffic crashes it would be the job of one of one of the Judicial Police accident investigators to assist the Professor during autopsy. However, in this case he believed that a decision was made at a high level to have him assist the Professor because of his experience and expertise'. The Professor had just inspected the body of Diana, Princess of Wales. Now she was examining the driver in autopsy. This was a memorable day. The entire world was in shock, and watching. Professor Lecomte was right in the middle of it. Was the driver drunk? These blood samples where what the authorities were waiting for, as well as the media, as vital evidence. One cannot imagine that she would forget any part of this autopsy, the biggest autopsy of her life, or make any basic careless errors, especially regarding the blood sampling. Indeed, Mules states that normally a third observer - the 'identificateur' - Mr Chevriers (now deceased) would place the exhibits, the samples, under seal, but that in this instance Professor Lecomte insisted on overall control and did this job herself (p273). Professor Lecomte knew the importance of this autopsy. When interviewed by Paget (p270), she says that normal autopsy procedure was to sample from the heart, and that is what she did here, even though there was a chest cavity present here; and she says that she labelled the samples herself.

Almost a year after the accident, on 19th June 1998, Judge Stephan appointed Professor Lecomte (who actually took the blood samples) and Dr Pepin to look into the 20.7% figure for carbon monoxide and try and explain it (p318). They come up with a joint report on 16th October 1998, in which they go into detail about how Henri Paul was a smoker, which they say could partly account for the 20.7%, and that the airbag could have had traces of carbon monoxide, which could account for the rest. (This has now been discounted.) Nowhere do they state that the blood sample came from the chest cavity and so could have been contaminated, even though they were under pressure to come up with answers. In fact they actually call the blood 'cardiac' blood: "The level which we found in the cardiac blood is 20.7% ... and in the venous blood, taken from the femoral vein is 12.8%." Also "...this explains the difference found between the cardiac blood, close to the lungs (20.7%)... and the venous blood, taken from the femoral vein, for which the lower level of 12.8% is found..." (p319-320)

The French Dossier is a big file on the French Investigation including witness statements and reports and medical reports. Documents are numbered D1, D2 ... and go up into the thousands - D4412, D4413 etc. For example, on a certain day the judge may request blood samples to be taken - this request might be document D1000. The next day, a doctor might report that he has taken the samples - this might be document D1001. A week later, the judge might request hair samples be taken - say D1500, and the doctor's report complying with the request might be D1501. Six months later, the file might have, say, D3200 as the latest page. If interested parties now wanted copies of information of the earlier of blood samples and hair samples just mentioned, then D1000, D1001, D1500 and D1501 would all be photocopied, and still remain in their original positions in the file, but the new copies would also reappear again later on in the file, now grouped together and added on as the latest entries after D3200. So the copy of D1000 would go in at D3201, a copy of D1001 would be D3202, a copy of D1500 at D3203 and copy of D1501 at D3204. The duplicate pages would also have the original D number next to the new one, so D3201 would be marked 'D3201 D1000'.

On Monday 8th September 1997, the Judge gave a judicial order or 'assignment' to Professor Lecomte to report on where samples, especially blood samples (which gave the 20.7% carboxyhaemoglobin) were taken from (p276). This order was D1319-D1320 in the file. The report giving this answer should have come soon after in the French Dossier at D1323, but Fayed's lawyers and Operation Paget both each had a copy of the whole file in which this order was not answered. But the D1323 wasn't missing - instead the D1323 gave answers about a spinal cord sample. Apparently, years later, the 'real' D1323 report was found floating around further down the file, buried at D4412 (marked D4412 D1323). This is thousands of pages later, and it wasn't preceded by the document of the judge's assignment to describe its relevance. And the spinal cord report which was at D1323 is in its correct place a little later on, at D1462, preceded with the corresponding judicial order asking for spinal cord samples at D1461. In other words, not only was the proper D1323 not in its place - one major error - but also a second document D1462 was falsely duplicated and falsely inserted earlier in the file with a false earlier number D1323 - the EXACT place of the first error! (p277-278) Not only that, but the rogue D1323 made a passable imitation of the real D1323. It had the same date - 9th September (Spinal cord samples were specifically asked for by the judge with a separate order on the same day as the judge made the order asking for clarification of where the autopsy samples, especially blood, had been taken from) and because the false D1323 talked of 'samples' (spinal cord samples) it looked like it was answering without answering in detail. And because, a year later, the judge asked Professor Lecomte and Dr Pepin both to jointly provide a report providing possible explanations for the 20.7% carboxyhaemoglobin, TWICE (p334,p335) and they provided TWO separate reports where they state that the blood concerned was cardiac blood each time, it was generally accepted by everyone, from then onwards, to definitely be cardiac blood.

The "correct" D1323 seems to have been discovered around 2005. This report, supposedly dated 9th Sept 1997, and supposedly by Professor Lecomte, states that the samples were taken from the chest cavity because the heart only yielded a few drops of blood. Paget says that they only discovered all this in late 2005, and they told Dr Pepin in 2006. This is the Dr Pepin who was the main independent French expert, who actually discovered the 20.7% carboxyhaemoglobin a few days after the accident in 1997! This Dr Pepin closely worked with Professor Lecomte herself and wrote two reports with her (p334, p335 - report of 16th Oct 98 "heart blood", report of 12th Jan 99 "heart blood") trying hard to explain the 20.7% carboxyhaemoglobin level of the very samples which she extracted herself. And he didn't know that they didn't come from the heart, but from the chest cavity all along, which means, say Paget, that he didn't know this could have explained away the high carboxyhaemoglobin as just 'possible contamination'?? Total farce!

The fifth fact is that no CCTV pictures are available for the route of the journey. Can anyone believe that? We have no end of CCTV footage inside the Ritz Hotel, where we don't need it, and no pictures along the route, especially of the crash itself? And everyone has just accepted that? (Just like we have CCTV footage of the Brazilian approaching Stockwell station, of him passing the barriers, of him going down the escalators - but none of him after that? None along the platform, none in the train?) Is the Ritz Hotel an island, a wealthy outpost of Western civilization out in some shady tinpot country, out in the third world, so that no CCTV cameras exist to film the main streets outside? It's in the middle of Paris! No information has been given about this for a long time. Recently I heard on television that all the cameras along the route completely missed every part of the street (!), and that as for the tunnel, the cameras were switched of at 9pm that night! WHY? Has this ever happened before? Where is the hard evidence of when else this has happened, and why. Where is all the footage from all the cameras that missed the streets so perfectly, you would have thought it an imprisonable offence to have a CCTV camera pointing, even slightly, at the street? Look at all the CCTV recordings made by the Ritz Hotel itself. Look at the number of them, all the angles, all the detail. There's even footage of outside. Detailed footage of the main square, detailed footage of the side street where Diana left from. These Ritz security cameras clearly show the streets, people in the streets, parked vehicles opposite, vehicles passing by in the streets. And NO OTHER BUILDINGS on route had recordings of THEIR streets? Cameras on the fronts of buildings pointing down to street level will definitely record the pavement and at least part of the street just like the Ritz did, and give details of passing traffic. Ian Hislop said just having the inquest was an insult to our intelligence. No, THIS is an insult to our intelligence! There were Ministry of Defence buildings there! It's Paris, foremost city of Europe! The city police would have had dozens of visible cameras and dozens of hidden cameras, all recording.

To give one example of the attitude of the police in searching for evidence and gathering statements, the Paget report gives details of French paparazzo Pierre Suu who gave hearsay evidence that another paparazzo, Pierre Hounsfield allegedly saw a portable radar speed camera near the Alma underpass. He stated that this camera was well known and deployed mainly on weekends. Police from the Paget enquiry telephoned Pierre Hounsfield in France who confirmed on the phone that this is indeed what he saw. He said it was an old style, tripod-type speed camera and he recalled that there was a marked police car with a couple of uniformed police officers who may have been in the process of putting it away, he wasn't quite sure, and that this was by the entrance to the underpass by the trees separating the slip road from the expressway. Then the police asked him what direction he had been coming from, and he replied that it was from Dodi's apartment, from Arsene Houssaye via avenue Marceau or avenue George V, then "he himself realized that if that were the case he would not have passed the camera as he described it (i.e. Cours Albert 1er). He wondered if his memory was playing tricks." After that one phone conversation, Hounsfield took legal advice and refused to comment any further at all. Is it any wonder? These witnesses are indirectly threatened off. The police make it very clear what they don't want to hear. A memory of seeing the mobile camera in the aftermath of the accident would have been very clear and impossible to mistake for another time or place. These photographers were moving back and forth in the excitement after the crash, continually moving about for hours. He could have seen it at any time after the accident - why did it have to be only the moment he arrived at the scene? He DEFINITELY saw what he said he saw; it's just that the police didn't want to hear it. Paget then goes on to say that another witness, Gary Dean, was walking in that area and he didn't see this camera, but the way it's written in the Paget report - 'He states that he walked passed that area twice - he did not see the camera' as if the witness volunteered the statement, when actually he was asked "Did you definitely walk past twice? Did you see any mobile speed camera? So you are stating that you walked passed the area twice and you did not see any mobile speed camera?" The police type it up and read it back to them for them to sign. Just because one person walking by didn't notice this camera in the dark, didn't make a mental note of it, what does that mean? Non-drivers wouldn't remember that detail, anyway. And there had just been a terrific accident, maybe before this witness even came near where the mobile speed camera was, so that would have taken all his attention. Perhaps it was an unmanned camera on a tripod, and it was only noticable when two officers with a car arrived and were putting it away - this hasn't been clarified. Someone that was a roaduser, that was hanging around for a long time, they would have been more likely to spot it. And someone did.

It took almost TWO HOURS to get Diana to hospital. Even now, after ten years, this one fact is still staggering. Ian Hislop was yelling at the top of his voice "TWO ENQUIRIES!" What was needed was someone of merit to shout back "TWO HOURS!" When Richard Hammond from BBC Top Gear had that terrible accident while filming, he was taken to hospital by air within minutes. There is Diana, the most famous woman in the world, in the middle of Paris, and she bleeds to death for hours! If she could have been operated on within 45 minutes she could have been saved. No 'theory' - these are all facts. Frederic Maillez, the off-duty doctor who was first on the scene, thought that she would be rushed to hospital and had a 'good chance'. He could see evidence of internal bleeding and knew she needed immediate surgery. A member of the first ambulance crew which arrived at the scene, who wanted to remain anonymous when he was interviewed by British press at the time, also stated that Diana showed clear signs of internal bleeding.

For most of the last ten years, until the recent pressure for answers put on authorities due to the upcoming inquest, many made excuses for the delay by explaining that it took firemen a long time to cut Diana free from the wreckage. Even if Diana was just unlucky and received incompetent treatment rather than deliberate medical foul play, there is certainly no doubt that a lot of covering up has been taking place. Diana wasn't 'trapped' and didn't have to be cut free. I have seen a lot of glossy 'coffee table' books about Diana. They have to end the book with some sort of reference to the accident, and Diana being trapped in the wreckage is the sort of explanation they give to explain the delay to hospital. We now know that there wasn't serious damage to the back of the Mercedes. The first doctor, Maillez, refers to Diana 'lying across the back seat'. (Now, there are many reports of Diana walking about unaided, of actually walking into the ambulance. On the night of the accident, I was watching television when I heard the newsflashes. The first report was that Dodi and the driver were dead, but that Diana was OK, with just a broken arm/elbow. This story continued for two hours, and then it was suddenly and shockingly announced that Diana was dead. This seems to lend weight to accounts that Diana may have been seen by witnesses/reporters to have been relatively unhurt at the start.) It is FACT that Diana was out of the wreckage almost immediately. It seems that the official version is that at this moment Diana suffers a cardiac arrest and doctors perform an external chest massage, and after almost an hour of administering emergency first aid, the ambulance leaves for hospital at 1.25am, crawling along to avoid jolting the patient, and actually stopping for a few minutes just yards from the hospital, to allow paramedics to inject adrenaline after Diana suffers a second heart attack.

In the Paget Report this part contains the word 'trapped' referring to Diana, and implies that there was difficulty removing Diana from the car, and that several people helped to remove her. You can smell the dishonesty. They want to give you the wrong impression without being in danger of being blamed for telling lies. Diana was sitting in the rear footwell. If you want to make a song and dance about removing an injured woman from the back of a car, it's possible to do so, but she could have been in hospital within ten minutes of the arrival of the ambulance at the accident scene. It may be that Diana just received very bad medical treatment, and needlessly died from her injuries through inadequate care and bad decision-making, but false cover stories were put out about her being 'trapped', and Paget makes excuses whereas if it was impartial, it would have stated that it now seems certain that medical mistakes were made and she should have been immediately rushed to hospital.

Because the accident happened in a tunnel, the number of witnesses was reduced, and because it was late at night the witnesses might have been taken by surprise and been less alert. Many who were watching Diana's vehicle obviously had their view obscured by it entering the tunnel while they were walking outside, or by them leaving the tunnel by rising up the exit ramp while the actual collision took place still back in the tunnel, out of view etc. Occupants of vehicles in the opposite lane had their view obstructed by the row of central pillars - the view is clear directly through the pillars to the immediate part of the opposite carriageway, but as one turns to look further up the opposite carriageway, the pillars appear closer and closer together, and then totally block out the view. Also, witnesses in vehicles would only have been watching the part of the accident from when their attention had been drawn to look in that direction onwards, and then it is unlikely that they would have noticed surrounding vehicles if their attention had been drawn to one particular vehicle losing contol, unless at that split moment the other vehicle impressed itself on their memory as being involved in some way. Witnessing the incident in rear-view mirrors makes these factors more pronounced, and witnesses would only remember seeing the central incident that stuck in their memory, and wouldn't even have a clear view of any vehicles surrounding that central incident. The events that were witnessed happened suddenly, in just three or four seconds. We can rely on witnesses remembering the central incident, remembering some paricular feature or event, but perhaps no more than that. If you were driving late at night in a tunnel, and some thing made you look in your mirror, and you saw a car start to lose control, you wouldn't see, let alone remember any other vehicles around, you wouldn't be expecting foul play, and in any case your mirror would only give you part of the view, and if driving yourself you would have to concentrate on that as well.

To put this another way, anyone travelling on a motorway, any pedestrian walking nearby, would not suddenly be able to recall vehicles that had just passed in other lanes or in the opposite carriageway, unless something paricularly appealed to them or interested them, or something unusual caught their eye. From that point onwards, of course, they would then be watching with full attention until their view became obstructed. But they would remember details of one vehicle if it was behaving unusually, details of a few other features of interest perhaps, but they wouldn't remember the surrounding vehicles. If I was driving along and suddenly heard screeching tyres I would look at the vehicle concerned and perhaps think 'He's losing control' or 'Mad idiot is going to crash'. I wouldn't think that other vehicles would be involved or remember them later. In the case of the Diana crash, the best witnesses would be travelling in the same carriageway as Diana, in the same direction, either in front of or behind her Mercedes. Witnesses in the opposite carriageway would only get snatched glimpses. Witnesses outside the tunnel would lose sight of the vehicle as it entered the tunnel - just as their interest was growing and attention being focussed on something unusual going on concerning it, it would be totally disappearing from view.