Setback at Diana inquest

last updated 8 January 2015

London

In the latest in a series of delays, the coroner at the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and her companion Dodi Fayed quit this week. Baroness Butler-Sloss said she did not have enough experience presiding over jury cases to do justice to the inquest. Last month, Mohamed Fayed, Dodi’s father, won a judicial ruling forcing a jury, rather than a single judge, to hear the inquest. Butler-Sloss is abandoning an inquest that has already been held up for nearly a decade. Her replacement, Lord Justice Scott Baker, will be the third person to take charge of the inquest. Former royal coroner Michael Burgess stepped down last summer, citing a “heavy and constant” workload. Di and Dodi were killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.