London, April 7
Britain’s Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed in a 1997 car crash due to “grossly negligent” driving of their chauffeur and the paparazzi trailing their car, the jury in her inquest said today, setting at rest conspiracy theories about her death.

The Paris crash more than 10 years ago was caused by the speed and the way Henri Paul was driving the couple’s Mercedes on the night of August 31 as well as the photographers in pursuit, the jury ruled.

Coroner Lord Justice Scott told the jurors they could not find the crash was an “unlawful killing by the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip) or anyone else in a staged accident”.

The jury had to decide if the deaths had been an accident, unlawful killing by negligence, or unexplained. They could not find they had been murdered.

The couple died when their speeding car slammed into a concrete pillar while it was being chased by photographers in cars and on motorbikes. The jury also said that the fact that neither of them were wearing seatbelts was a contributing factor to their death.

The 11-member jury also said Paul’s judgement was impaired because he had drunk alcohol early in the evening before the group left the Ritz hotel in Paris.

The jury returned the historic ruling less than an hour after being told they did not have to make a decision on their deaths unanimously.

The ruling is expected to bring down the curtains to a decade of wild conspiracy theories about how Diana died.

Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, the boss of the departmental store Harrod’s, had accused Prince Philip, Prince Charles, the Mi6 British intelligence agency and then prime minister Tony Blair of being involved in a plot to kill her.

Lord Justice Baker told the court there was “not a shred of evidence” the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Princess Diana’s death or that it was organised by MI6.

Conspiracy theories suggested by Mohamed about the deaths were without foundation, he said.

Lord Justice Baker gave the jury a majority direction this afternoon, four days after they retired to deliberate on the case. The inquest made British legal history as the first to hold sessions overseas when it convened in Paris in October so that the jury could see exactly where the couple died. It has taken the cost of probing Diana’s death to over £ 6 million.

Meanwhile, Mohamed Al Fayed, the father of Diana’s boyfriend Dodi Fayed, maintained that the couple were murdered, after the inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing. The Egyptian tycoon said he was “disappointed” by the verdict. — PTI