Inquest into Dianas death

last updated 8 January 2015

London

The official inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and her lover, Dodi Fayed, began this week, more than six years after the two were killed in a car crash in Paris. Coroner Michael Burgess blamed the unusual delay on an “extremely lengthy” French investigation into the role of the paparazzi who were chasing the car. He said the inquest would be thorough in light of the current “speculation that these deaths were not the result of a sad, but relatively straightforward, road traffic accident.” Conspiracy theories that the crash was prearranged received new fuel this week after the Daily Mirror published a letter from Diana to her butler, Paul Burrell, in which she claimed that Charles was trying to kill her. “My husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car,” she wrote, “in order to make the path clear for him to marry.”