In a further blow to Mr Mohamed al-Fayed, the Egyptian millionaire whose son was killed in a car accident with Princess Diana two years ago, the Paris prosecutor's office has laid partial blame for the crash on his son, Dodi.
Dodi Fayed "took an active part in the security arrangements. He was the boss", Princess Diana's bodyguard, Mr Trevor Rees-Jones, told investigating magistrates, according to excerpts from the leaked report of the prosecutor, Ms Maud Coujard, yesterday.
Nearly a quarter of the prosecutor's 28-page secret report is taken up by Mr Fayed's "disproportionate reaction" to a small crowd of photographers and onlookers gathered outside the Ritz Hotel on the night of August 30th, 1997.
"The growing presence of photographers may have legitimately irritated the princess and her companion," Ms Coujard wrote. "But it was not unexpected, in view of the extreme media attention paid to their liaison." Mr Fayed could have requested a French police escort but did not do so, she noted.
It was Dodi Fayed who ordered a new Mercedes from the Etoile limousine service, which provided cars for the Ritz Hotel, owned by Mr Mohamed al-Fayed. Mr Jean-Francois Musa, the firm's manager, told the investigating magistrate that he warned Mr Fayed that Henri Paul, the head of security at the Ritz, did not have the permit required to drive the car. But Mr Fayed chose to ignore him and insisted that Mr Paul, who was used to driving a Mini and had been drinking in the hotel bar, drive the couple to his apartment.
"The direct cause of the accident," the prosecutor concluded, "was the presence at the wheel of the Mercedes S280 of a driver in an advanced state of drunkenness, combined with a recent dose of medicine, driving at a speed that was not only higher than the legal limit . . . but excessive in view of the place."
An autopsy later found that Mr Paul had three times the legal amount of alcohol in his blood. He was taking the anti-depressants Prozac and Tiapridal, drugs which should not be used with alcohol.
Mr Mohamed al-Fayed has consistently rejected any implication that, as Mr Paul's employer, he shared responsibility for the deaths of his son and the princess. The prosecutor's conclusion after a 17-month investigation that Dodi's poor judgment helped to bring about the accident is another devastating blow for the owner of Harrod's department store.
The bodyguard, Mr Rees-Jones, was the only survivor of the accident, and he was the only one who wore a seat-belt. "The lives of Emad Al Fayed and Lady Diana Spencer would have been saved if they had fastened their seatbelts," the report says.
Mr al-Fayed has promoted two theories that would exonerate him and his dead son: that there was a conspiracy by the British royal family to murder the couple and that the nine photographers and a motorcycle courier who followed the Mercedes S280 caused the accident. He apparently sees no contradiction in simultaneously asserting that both are true.
In pursuit of the first theory, Mr al-Fayed recently asked Senator George Mitchell to help him to obtain US intelligence records on threats to Princess Diana. The Paris prosecutor's report absolves the photographers of responsibility, noting that "it has not been shown that at the moment when the driver lost control of his vehicle he was forced to adopt the speed that rendered the accident inevitable".
If, as expected, the photographers are formally cleared of charges of manslaughter and failing to assist persons in danger, Mr al-Fayed will contest the decision, his French lawyer, Mr Georges Kiejman, told Reuters yesterday
