UK:THE JURY at the inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and her companion Dodi Fayed last night finally and definitively decided that they had been unlawfully killed by a combination of the driving of their Mercedes by their chauffeur Henri Paul and the driving of following vehicles - the posse of paparazzi photographers who were dogging their final journey.
After 22 hours of deliberation, spread over four days, following a hearing lasting six months into the crash which killed the couple and Mr Paul when the car smashed head-on into the 13th pillar of the Alma Tunnel in Paris shortly after midnight on August 31st, 1997, the jury of six women and five men produced a 9-2 majority verdict.
The inquest heard from 278 witnesses and is estimated to have cost the British taxpayer more than £6.5 million.
Just before 4.30pm, on the 94th day of the inquest, the jury forewoman told the coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker that the deaths had been caused by "grossly negligent driving".
She added from a prepared text: "The crash was caused or contributed to by the speed and manner of the driving of the Mercedes, the speed and manner of driving of the following vehicles, the impairment of the judgment of the driver of the Mercedes through alcohol, and there are nine of us who agree on those conclusions.
"In addition, the death of the deceased was caused or contributed to by the fact that the deceased [ were] not wearing seatbelt(s), the fact that the Mercedes struck the pillar in the Alma Tunnel rather than colliding with something else, and we are unanimous on that, sir."
The decision comes as a blow to Dodi's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, who has claimed for many years that the couple were murdered in a criminal conspiracy by the British establishment, allegedly led by the Duke of Edinburgh.
He has also denied any culpability for allowing Mr Paul, his employee who was acting head of security at Fayed's Ritz Hotel, to drive the couple on their brief final journey from the hotel to the Fayeds' apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. Last night he emerged from consultations with his lawyers to announce his disappointment but to claim, defiantly, in a statement read by his spokeswoman, that he had been absolved of any blame.
His spokeswoman, Katherine Witty, even spun a new conspiracy out of the verdict, claiming that the following vehicles might also have contained conspirators: "The jury have found that it wasn't just the paparazzi who caused the crash, but identified following vehicles. Who they are and what they were doing in Paris is still a mystery." One senior employee said privately: "At least the verdict wasn't for an accident."
As he left the court a thunderous-looking Mr Fayed muttered to journalists: "The most important thing is it's murder."
In his summing-up last week the coroner told the jury they had to be strongly convinced of culpability before returning a verdict of unlawful killing. The inquest heard no evidence that assassins were in the vehicles that followed the Mercedes on its high-speed journey.
Although they had initially been asked for a unanimous verdict, the jury told the coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker in mid-afternoon that they could reach only a majority decision and, when he allowed that, they returned within the hour.
Also outside the court, Lord Stevens, the former London Metropolitan police commissioner, who conducted a three-year, £3.7 million investigation with staff from New Scotland Yard which concluded that the crash was an accident, claimed satisfaction with the verdict. "This is a justification of the report that we did."
The coroner had told the jury that they would have to consider whether the driving of the paparazzi had demonstrated a reckless disregard for the couple's lives. Last night one of them, Nikola Arsov, said on British TV he had just been doing his job: "As for blaming the photographers, it's just wrong. It was the driver, it was alcohol, it was speed - it wasn't us."
- (Guardian service)