09.30. April 10th 2008, I have been up for two hours, having a coffee made up of the coffee and milk left over from last night, waste not and want not, washing up, correcting and publishing my Blog of the day and sorting out in my mind some issues for the day and of longer term significance.
The weather as is customary opens brightly and then changes, if it is to do so as the morning progresses. There are rain clouds intermingled with the patches of blue. I decided to rise at seven because of the possibility my second scale model Ferrari car would arrive and as I started to write this opening piece it did, at a better hour of the day than the usual before eight o’clock.
I have read the first morning summing up by the Coroner in the Inquisition about the cause and circumstances of the Deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed and include the first part unamended as part of today’s writing without alteration except for deleting the page and line numbers. I will have a drink of orange juice, and then attend to some correspondence and then undertake some work on Household accounts. I gathered some daffodils which have broken stems from recent weather and placed in a vase in this room on the window sill. I still have three large white hyacinths and the tulips are in bud and should soon be in flower.
16.40 Some progress has been made in that I have found the medical practice where my mother was registered and written to them. I have replaced the event display boxes in my main bedroom with the new style, the original purpose was to bring down the volume of key certificates of family history into a secure cabinet, and to take up the Lord of Rings volumes, the latest development file, but need to do some more sort of the first floor display and store room.
Around midday I had the rest of the first pack of smoked salmon with horseradish on two slices of brown plus small salad, banana and coffee and later the prawn on shell with cup of tea. I decide to update the my friends list and this always takes longer than intended all the new system has improved matters.
I allowed myself to be distracted by two films. A prize of arms is a nasty subject firm where a party from the end I cannot sure what they production was aiming to achieve. Stanley Bake plays a former officer who was kicked out of the army after being caught as a black market profiteer who feels hard done by because others who had committed worse crimes had got away with it, He cooks up a scheme to rob an army HQ of a substantial amount of money drawn because the regiment is going overseas and into action. Outside of murder and physical violence this is a despicable crime. It was also evident early on that they would not get away with it. The film features a young Tom Bell, Helmut Schmidt, and Geoffrey Palmer as a motorcycle rider. The second film, Hard Ground had greater substance. Burt Reynolds stars as a man who goes to prison for 99 years so that his son can have grow up part of a normal family life albeit with a surrogate father who is a lawman in ye olde wild west. Mr Reynolds gets the chance of a pardon by helping to go after and dispose of the evil leader of a gang who murders a family moving into the west from the north just for the hell of it, taking the mother’s young sister for his own pleasure and to sell in an area where there are no women for 100 miles close to the Mexican border. The gang are being tracked by the son and eventually the four meet up and carry out the mission, learning about themselves and establishing relationships. Just the recipe for late afternoon while I half concentrate on other things. Going to the post box it was a pleasant evening and this prompted to make a second trip for a stir fry having forgotten to defrost some fish and to buy a couple of inexpensive battery lights to supplement the temporary lighting in the day room. I also half watched the football before giving attention to the second Cruickshank programme with the title Death. The aim was to show how different people at different times have approached death, The first visit is to Czech republic to view a chapel which contains the bones of some 40000 departed and where one individual keeps the place spic and span with a mobile mini vac to keep the piles of bones dust free,. He then visit’s the Mayan city pyramid temples at Yaxha Iv in Guatemala. I missed his visit to Egypt and how the pharaohs went into the afterworld through elaborate mortuary temples. He then goes to Genoa to what is said to be Europe’s greatest cemetery because of spectacular collection of beautiful and erotic statues, Final I felt intrusively although he tries to show respect, he visit the dying rooms where relatives are brought in their last moments and prepared for cremation by the sacred waters of the Ganges.
The evening viewing was ended by keeping one eye on the a contemporary production using latest technology of Battlestar Gallactica 2004 2008. For a few moments I had a moment of panic because I was certain that I had seen the Battlestar Gallactica series and films in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s but it took time for me to find any trace!
As promised yesterday I begin today with the summing up by LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: of the Inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed. It should be read by anyone who has been or remains inclined to the conspiracy viewpoint. There are some debriefing points which should be made but these will following when all the summing up has been studied. Part one is as follows:
"Members of the jury, for the last ten and a half years, there have been those who claimed that what happened in the Alma Tunnel was no tragic accident but a staged collision intended to cause and in fact causing the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, along with the driver, Henri Paul, and Dodi Al Fayed. Foremost among those claimants has been Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father. There are no doubt those who genuinely believe this to be the case and will continue to do so regardless of any verdict you return. You have heard the evidence and it is your decision that matters and not anyone else’s. You will have been reassured to have heard that Mohamed Al Fayed told you on oath that he will accept your verdicts. No doubt the other interested persons will do likewise. But these inquests, despite the time that they have taken and the cost, have served an important purpose.
The conspiracy theories and the rumour and suspicion that they have generated and that have in many instances been encouraged by the media have been examined in the minutist detail through the evidence of over 250 witnesses. "
No one, except you and I, and I think the gentleman in the public gallery with "Diana" and "Dodi" painted on his forehead has sat through every word of evidence.
No one is as well equipped as you are to decide the facts of the case. The benefit of these last six months is that various propositions that were being asserted have been shown to be so demonstrably without foundation that they are no longer being pursued by Mohamed Al Fayed’s lawyers, even if he still carries the belief of their truth in his own mind. They are not being pursued because there is not a shred of evidence to support them.
Foremost among them is the proposition that Diana was assassinated by the Secret Intelligence Service on the orders of the Duke of Edinburgh. There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Diana’s execution and there is no evidence that the Secret Intelligence Service or any other Government agency organised it.
Mr Horwell, Queen’s Counsel, suggested during cross-examination that one of the features of conspiracy theories is that as one allegation is shown to be unfounded, so another crops up and so on. Thus, we have moved from the Duke ordering assassination to a suggestion that he created a "serious climate of hostility". He was not himself guilty of any crime, but his views fed into the thinking of the day. Those who are committed to the interests of the Monarchy may have formed their own view as to what would be in the
Monarchy’s best interests and how best to protect it from perceived threats. It may have been, so it is said, such persons who independently staged the crash in the tunnel in order to frighten or injure Diana if not actually intending to kill her, and that this was done in the interests of Queen and Country.
One reason, perhaps the reason, why the conspiracy has shifted from the original allegation that the Duke of Edinburgh was its mastermind is the unprecedented manner in which the Secret Intelligence Service and indeed others have been prepared to open their doors and give evidence about their inner workings. No longer can it be said, as Mohamed Al Fayed has frequently
complained, that there was a steel wall that it was completely impossible to penetrate.
The allegations against the Duke of Edinburgh are not the only subjects of rumour and suspicion that have been dispelled by our wide-ranging examination of the evidence. As I said at the beginning of the inquests, I expected that, as we progressed, some issues would fall away and others would come to the fore. This has proved to be so. What are the possible verdicts? First, applying
the law, I have determined that it is not open to you to find that this was unlawful killing by the Duke of Edinburgh or anyone else in a staged accident. I shall explain why shortly. It is, however, open to you to find unlawful killing due to the gross negligence of the following vehicles in the manner in which they were following and hounding the Mercedes. It is also open to you to find unlawful killing through the gross negligence of Henri Paul because of the speed and manner of his driving and any alcohol he may have consumed.
Further, it is open to you to find unlawful killing by both the following vehicles and Henri Paul together. If none of these verdicts is established, it is open to you to find accidental death in that the collision was caused through one or more causes, without gross negligence on anyone’s part. Finally, it is possible for you to return an open verdict if you conclude that the evidence does not establish any of the other verdicts.
I shall explain shortly what is necessary to establish each of these five verdicts and the standard of proof required to do so. In due course I shall sum up the evidence to you and, at various points, link that evidence to the legal directions I am about to give you.
We have spent much of the last six months considering whether the collision in the Alma Tunnel all those years ago may have been anything more than a tragic accident. In other words, whether anyone staged what happened. Later this week you will be retiring to consider your verdicts. The decisions you make will be important ones and they are yours and yours alone. But before that, I have to sum the case up to you. In doing so, I have two tasks. I have to direct you on the law and you must accept, without question, my directions on the law; secondly, I shall summarise the facts and, in doing so, I shall draw your attention
to what appear to me to be the more important issues in the case.
But just as the law is for me, so the facts are for you. It is for you to decide what evidence is relevant and significant, what evidence you accept and reject, and which witnesses you think are honest and liable It is your view that counts and not any view you may think I have. So if you think I have a view about a particular aspect of the evidence and it does not accord with yours, reject it. Equally, if I do not refer, in the course of this summing-up, to evidence which you consider important, you must not feel tempted to ignore it. You must consider all the evidence My direction in law to you is, as I have said, that it is not open to you to find that Diana and Dodi were unlawfully killed in a staged accident. Why, you may ask, is this so? Surely that is just what we, the jury, are here to decide. The answer s this: the law is clear -- and no one has argued otherwise -- that unless there is sufficient evidence upon which a jury can conclude that they are sure a deceased was unlawfully killed in a particular way, the Coroner is required to take the burden on his own shoulders and withdraw that verdict from the jury.
When a coroner leaves a verdict of unlawful killing, in this case on the basis of a staged accident, to a jury, he must identify to the jury the evidence on which they could be sure of such a conclusion. But in this case sufficient evidence simply does not exist. Speculation, surmise and belief are one thing; evidence is another.
This does not, however, mean that all the suggestions you have heard about the possibility of a staged crash are irrelevant. Because there is some evidence, albeit limited and of doubtful quality, that the crash was staged, it will be necessary for you to consider it in the context of the five verdicts that are open to you.
If you are not satisfied so you are sure that this was unlawful killing by the following vehicles or Henri Paul and you do not think that the crash was probably an accident, you would return an open verdict. So if you thought that the crash had probably been staged, you would return an open verdict. Whatever your verdict, whether unlawful killing, accident or open, it must be unanimous. There are circumstances in which a majority verdict can be accepted, but they have not arisen in this case and, if they do, I shall give you a separate direction about it.
You may be wondering why it is that over ten years after the event, you are considering, in the greatest detail, matters said to be relevant to the crash in the Paris underpass on 31st August 1997. In the first place there always had to be an inquest because
the deaths of Diana and Dodi were unnatural and their bodies were returned to this country. But why the delay and why the great detail?
The fact that one of the dead was Diana, Princess of Wales, created the most enormous media interest, and even leaving aside Mohamed Al Fayed, there were mutterings from the start, "Was this really an accident?" The paparazzi involvement triggered the French investigation. Then there was the Paget inquiry. Finally Mohamed Al Fayed has continued to pursue his allegations with vigour and persistence, and no doubt at considerable cost, determined to leave not even the smallest stone unturned.
As you have been reminded on many occasions, this is an inquiry and I have considered it appropriate to look into many issues to confirm or allay suspicion The very fact that these allegations have been circulating during the last ten years, and, I would add, not only coming from Mohamed Al Fayed, makes it important to put matters to rest one way or the other, once and for all. Many of the rumours you may think, if not media-generated, have been media-encouraged, and where there is no substance in them, it is in everyone’s interests that this should be shown to be the case,
rather than they be left in the air.
The fact that there has been evidence about a topic does not of itself mean that it is necessary for me to remind you of it in any detail in summing-up or even that it has any relevance to the questions that you have to decide. We have, as I pointed out to Mr Mansfield QC, during the evidence of Sir John Adye, the former head of GCHQ, chased a lot of hares since last October. No one who has not lost a child or a very close loved one can perhaps ever truly comprehend the devastating effect of such a loss and how it gnaws away at one. You will, I am sure, have great sympathy for
Mohamed Al Fayed and his family because of that. You will also, I am sure, have in mind that not only was Diana an iconic figure, but also that two sons have lost a wonderful and devoted mother and that they too have suffered an irreparable loss, a loss which must be the harder to bear because not only of the intimate
details that have been publicised during the case, but
also their every move is watched so intently by the world’s media.11 It was not only her sons who lost a mother, but other family members who lost a sister and a daughter. You will have sympathy too for the frail parents of Henri Paul. But the bottom line, embers of the jury, is you are charged with returning a verdict on
the evidence and you must decide and assess what you make of the evidence, dispassionately putting your own emotions, whatever they may be, on one side Your duty is to find the facts and reach
a conclusion on the evidence, and that transcends any desire, for example, to mark your disapproval of anyone’s behaviour or to make a statement of some kind. It is true that whatever your verdict, it is likely to be seen as a defining moment. But you must
disregard, when you come to analyse the evidence, that this is no ordinary case and decide it as you would any other.
This is no ordinary case and the inquest has been no ordinary inquest. It does not need me to tell you that the collision in the tunnel and the resultant deaths of Diana, Dodi and Henri Paul have caused millions of words to be written, been the subject of numerous television programmes and generated a multitude of newspaper and magazine articles as well as books. There has been seemingly endless speculation, both in this country and
abroad.
Up and down the land and indeed throughout the world there are those who have firm views about the case, but, as I have said, you are the ones who have listened to every word of evidence and, most importantly, been able to see and assess every person who has given oral evidence.
Each of you has taken an oath to inquire into the deaths and return verdicts according to the evidence, and anyone who has been in court will be aware of the enormous time, care and commitment that each of you has given to this case. Because of the background that I have described and the amount of information and disinformation circulating in the media, these inquests have involved a far more wide-ranging inquiry than would be appropriate in most inquests. Apart from the inquiries by the French and
the Metropolitan Police, Mohamed Al Fayed has, as you have heard, conducted his own investigation, headed by Mr John McNamara, his former head of security. The reasons why these inquests have been so wide-ranging is, as I have said many times, to confirm or allay rumour or suspicion. Many issues have been investigated in evidence that have turned out to have no or minimal bearing on what you have to decide. But it is important that we have heard evidence about these matters, otherwise people would be able to say in the future that the inquests did not consider this or that, and if they had done so, your decision might have been different.
You have a complete transcript of all 30 lever-arch files of the evidence and it is there for you to refer to during your deliberations, if you need it. But I strongly advise against trying to read it through from beginning to end. It is there for your reference if you need it. Your assessments and impressions of the evidence will have been accumulating over time and those assessments and impressions are very important. I have said it so many times already that it probably does not need saying again, but you decide the case on the evidence you have heard in this court and not on anything you may have seen, read or heard else where. So continue to ignore media reports. It is especially important not to conduct your own investigations on the internet because so many things said about this case out of court have turned out to be inaccurate, if not plainly wrong. One of the features of this case is the numerous
occasions on which witnesses have said things else where before they came here to give evidence to you. Obvious examples are statements to Paget officers and statements to the French judge or made in the French inquiry. Numerous books and articles have been written too, some by those who have given evidence to you, others by posts on their behalf. Bear in mind this statement of the obvious, that what sells books is their contents You may think that some accounts written by some authors are either plainly untrue or at least contain embellishments of the truth. You will wish to bear in mind that witnesses have been speaking about events many years go and recollections fade. It is easy to confuse what you remember with what you have heard, read or seen somewhere else. The collision took place over ten years ago. Unsurprisingly, many witnesses have been reminded about what they have said in statements made nearer the time. Sometimes they have agreed that that is their best or, on occasions, only recollection. In other instances, witnesses have been cross-examined on the basis that years before they said something contradictory to their evidence to you and the suggestion is that what they said to you cannot be relied on. You will also bear in mind that first-hand evidence is more likely to be reliable than second-hand evidence. What a witness saw or heard with their own eyes or years is likely to be more reliable than what someone else told them they saw or heard, and there has been a good deal of second-hand and even third-hand evidence in this case lots of evidence has been read to you. This falls into three categories. First, where what a witness says is uncontroversial, it obviously makes sense to read the evidence rather than bring the witness to court. An example is Dr Lipsedge, who dealt with the effect of head injuries on Trevor Rees’ memory. The second category is where the witness has died. Obviously the best we can do is read his evidence, but you must make allowances for the fact that there has been no opportunity to test what he says in cross-examination. The third category is where the witness’s evidence is not uncontroversial but, for some reason or another, he cannot be brought to court because, for example, he is abroad and refuses to give evidence or cannot be found. I have no power to compel the attendance of a witness who is outside England and Wales. The French authorities have given us considerable assistance in summoning witnesses and providing video link facilities, but the bottom line is that they have not compelled the attendance of witnesses who have refused to attend. In these circumstances, I have been obliged to call another witness to introduce their evidence. This has been the case with all the paparazzi except Darmon, the rider of Rat’s motorbike.
Some of these witnesses simply do not want to be involved in these proceedings so long after the event. Others have an axe to grind and may not wish to submit it themselves to cross-examination. The paparazzi are obvious examples. You must treat anything they said in their statements with particular care. They were under criminal investigation in France. It was obviously in their interests to distance themselves, if they could, from proximity to the Mercedes between the time it left the rear of the Ritz and the collision.
You have not heard in person from Professor Lecomte, Dr Pepin and others concerned with the analysis of Henri Paul’s samples, although you know in essence what is said by them second-hand through the English experts. It is a great pity they have not seen fit to give evidence because, as you have heard, there are a number
of serious criticisms about the professionalism of what they did. They have not explained what, if any, answer there is to apparent serious shortcomings on their part. There are question marks, therefore, about the conclusions to be drawn from the analysis of the blood samples said to have come from Henri Paul. I shall come to that in more detail in due course. There are no doubt some witnesses from whom you would like to have heard but have not. The paparazzi, Professor Lecomte and Dr Pepin are obvious examples. But you have to decide the case on the evidence that you have heard. When I opened the case to you, I explained that it was not necessary for you to solve every subplot, unravel every thread, although we have gone a good deal further in this case than we would ordinarily go.
In a case where someone dies suddenly, it is perhaps inevitable that there will be things about them or their lives that are quite unexplained, even to those who knew them best, but which, if they were alive, could be readily explained. And this may also be true of others who, for whatever reason, have not given evidence in
person to you. Things can assume mysterious proportions or even look potentially sinister when, if only you had heard from the witness, there might be a perfectly good explanation. Then again, there might not be. A good example is perhaps Dr Dumestre Toulet’s receipt. Before we heard from her, you might have been
thinking, "How has Dr Pepin got a receipt for sending
blood to her on a date which is after the date when she analysed it?" It is a matter for you, but it may be that after you heard from her, you accepted her explanation that it was a receipt for the report that she had sent to him after the analysis had been carried
out. Finally, before I leave the subject of witnesses generally, I want to say a word about expert witnesses; that is those who have been asked to review aspects of the evidence and express an opinion. You have heard from a number of these. Professor Treasure and Professor Forrest are examples. There are others,
including those who helped to reconstruct the collision. Such witnesses, members of the jury, do not give evidence primarily to establish facts, but to help you to interpret them in the light of their expertise. You are not obliged to accept an expert’s evidence any more than that of any other witness. They give opinion evidence to assist you, based on their expertise. Several experts sought to assist you as to the correct interpretation of the pathology and
toxicology evidence relating to Henri Paul. Sometimes experts disagree and it is for you to decide who you accept or what evidence you accept and what evidence you reject.
There was, for example, disagreement between experts about the precise point on the road where the collision took place between the Mercedes and the white Fiat Uno. Experts are entitled to give evidence as to facts as well as opinion evidence, and, indeed, some of the experts, such as Professor Forrest, gave evidence of fact of procedures carried out by French scientists. This was helpful in the absence of those scientists. I must also remind you once again that the conclusions of the Paget inquiry and the French inquiry are not relevant to your verdict. Neither had the opportunity of considering all the evidence that you have listened to and heard tested in cross-examination over the past six months.
The other point I should emphasise once again about the evidence is that these are not adversarial proceedings, as are criminal or civil litigation, but an inquiry to establish how two people came by their deaths and to confirm or allay rumour or suspicion about their deaths.
Further, you only act on evidence and not on a person’s assertion or belief unless it is supported by evidence. It is true that you can draw inferences from evidence, but the evidence must be there in the first place from which to draw the inference. An inference is no more than a common sense conclusion based on the evidence which you accept Sometimes a jury is asked to find some fact proved by direct evidence; for example, if there is reliable evidence from a witness who actually saw an event; if there is CCTV evidence recording a fact. These would be good examples of direct evidence. On the other hand it is often the case that direct evidence of some facts not available and circumstantial evidence has to be relied upon. That simply means placing reliance upon evidence of various circumstances relating to the factor facts which, when taken together, will lead to a sure conclusion concerning the fact. circumstantial evidence can be powerful evidence, but it is important that you examine it with care and consider whether the evidence is reliable and proves the relevant fact. In looking at circumstantial evidence, you need to consider any other circumstances which may be of sufficient reliability to strengthen or weaken your conclusions. Finally, you should be careful to distinguish between arriving at conclusions based on
reliable circumstantial evidence and mere speculation. Speculating in a case amounts to no more than guessing or making up theories without good evidence to support them. You must not do that.
In criminal cases, where a conspiracy is alleged based upon concrete evidence, juries are generally directed that it is rare to have direct evidence oaf criminal conspiracy because when people make agreements to commit crimes, they can be expected to do
so privately and without committing themselves to writing. For that reason, juries in such cases are also directed that they should look at evidence of the behaviour of the accused during the relevant period to determine whether they were involved in a conspiracy.
All that is good common sense. However, it does not mean that a jury in any case can indulge in guesswork or speculation.
Lies: one of the regrettable features of this case is the number of people who it appears have told lies in the witness box or elsewhere. Some are liars by their own admission. I refer to James Adamson, Paul Burrell and John McNamara. Others have either admitted telling half truths or part of their evidence may have shown, in one respect or more, that either in court or previously
they were not telling the truth. But I must give you this direction.
You must first decide whether the person whose evidence you are considering has lied, rather than having made an honest mistake. If you conclude that he has, you must then go on to bear this in mind. People tell lies for a variety of different reasons, for example, because they think it is in the interests of their employer or to further their own interests or they want to be in the limelight or they have a grudge against some other individual or to embellish their case. It does not follow that because you are satisfied that a witness has lied on one or some matters, that nothing he has told you can be relied on. It may be that the whole of a witness’s evidence is demonstrably unreliable, like, for example, Morel, but that is no necessarily the case. There is a particular problem with the paparazzi. The only member of the paparazzi from whom you have heard oral evidence is Darmon, and, strictly speaking, he was not a paparazzo, although, for practical purposes, we have treated him as one. It was said that part of his evidence amounted to a series of self-serving lies. You heard him give evidence and you will form your own view to what extent he was telling the truth. You have not had that advantage with the other paparazzi. When their evidence was introduced through Commissaire Gigou and Inspector Carpenter, it was pointed out that what some of them had said in their statements appeared to be untrue. You have not had the advantage of hearing them being tested about it. As I said at the beginning of these inquests and have repeated from time to time, it is your duty diligently to inquire into the deaths of Diana and Dodion the evidence you have heard in court. You must not be influenced by any external matters such as media reports or information that you had accumulated in the years before you began to hear the evidence. It is for that reason that I directed you not to speak to anyone outside the jury, including family and friends, about the case, to ensure that you were not subject to unintended influences. Members of the jury, that remains very important. Additionally, I emphasised that you should not seek information from elsewhere, for example the internet. That too remains an important matter. All 11 of you are responsible for returning verdicts and conclusions in these inquests. Therefore, as I said at the beginning, you should only discuss the case amongst yourselves when you are all present, in the privacy of your jury room. So please continue to remember not to discuss the case in small groups when other members of the jury are not present. Very rarely, something may happen (either outside your jury room, egg someone not on the jury apparently trying to speak to you about the case, or inside the jury room itself) which causes you real concern. If any of you has such a concern, especially after your retire to consider your verdicts and conclusions, please inform me about it at once, discreetly in a written note. Do not leave it until after the case is over because it might then be impossible to put matters right. I should say something about the advocates. Counsel the inquests, Mr Burnett QC, Mr Hilliard QC and Mr Hough, are here to act entirely impartially and examine the witnesses first on facts relevant to the inquiry. They have also tested the evidence of witnesses. Interested persons are entitled to be represented. Not all have chosen to be Counsel for the interested persons are here to represent their clients and are entitled to bring out any additional facts that may be perceived to be relevant to their clients and to challenge evidence with which their clients disagree. As I have had to reminds some of them more than once, the proceedings are not adversarial. As I have already told you, an inquest is a fact-finding exercise. The Coroners Rules prohibit any verdict that appears to determine civil liability generally or criminal liability of a named person.
I shall return in a moment to give you a fuller explanation of what this means, but it limits what you are entitled to say when you return your verdicts. I now turn to direct you in law on the verdicts you may return. You are about to be handed a hard copy of what I am now saying. You will probably wish to refer to this later and it may help you to have it so that you can follow it as speak it.
The weather as is customary opens brightly and then changes, if it is to do so as the morning progresses. There are rain clouds intermingled with the patches of blue. I decided to rise at seven because of the possibility my second scale model Ferrari car would arrive and as I started to write this opening piece it did, at a better hour of the day than the usual before eight o’clock.
I have read the first morning summing up by the Coroner in the Inquisition about the cause and circumstances of the Deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed and include the first part unamended as part of today’s writing without alteration except for deleting the page and line numbers. I will have a drink of orange juice, and then attend to some correspondence and then undertake some work on Household accounts. I gathered some daffodils which have broken stems from recent weather and placed in a vase in this room on the window sill. I still have three large white hyacinths and the tulips are in bud and should soon be in flower.
16.40 Some progress has been made in that I have found the medical practice where my mother was registered and written to them. I have replaced the event display boxes in my main bedroom with the new style, the original purpose was to bring down the volume of key certificates of family history into a secure cabinet, and to take up the Lord of Rings volumes, the latest development file, but need to do some more sort of the first floor display and store room.
Around midday I had the rest of the first pack of smoked salmon with horseradish on two slices of brown plus small salad, banana and coffee and later the prawn on shell with cup of tea. I decide to update the my friends list and this always takes longer than intended all the new system has improved matters.
I allowed myself to be distracted by two films. A prize of arms is a nasty subject firm where a party from the end I cannot sure what they production was aiming to achieve. Stanley Bake plays a former officer who was kicked out of the army after being caught as a black market profiteer who feels hard done by because others who had committed worse crimes had got away with it, He cooks up a scheme to rob an army HQ of a substantial amount of money drawn because the regiment is going overseas and into action. Outside of murder and physical violence this is a despicable crime. It was also evident early on that they would not get away with it. The film features a young Tom Bell, Helmut Schmidt, and Geoffrey Palmer as a motorcycle rider. The second film, Hard Ground had greater substance. Burt Reynolds stars as a man who goes to prison for 99 years so that his son can have grow up part of a normal family life albeit with a surrogate father who is a lawman in ye olde wild west. Mr Reynolds gets the chance of a pardon by helping to go after and dispose of the evil leader of a gang who murders a family moving into the west from the north just for the hell of it, taking the mother’s young sister for his own pleasure and to sell in an area where there are no women for 100 miles close to the Mexican border. The gang are being tracked by the son and eventually the four meet up and carry out the mission, learning about themselves and establishing relationships. Just the recipe for late afternoon while I half concentrate on other things. Going to the post box it was a pleasant evening and this prompted to make a second trip for a stir fry having forgotten to defrost some fish and to buy a couple of inexpensive battery lights to supplement the temporary lighting in the day room. I also half watched the football before giving attention to the second Cruickshank programme with the title Death. The aim was to show how different people at different times have approached death, The first visit is to Czech republic to view a chapel which contains the bones of some 40000 departed and where one individual keeps the place spic and span with a mobile mini vac to keep the piles of bones dust free,. He then visit’s the Mayan city pyramid temples at Yaxha Iv in Guatemala. I missed his visit to Egypt and how the pharaohs went into the afterworld through elaborate mortuary temples. He then goes to Genoa to what is said to be Europe’s greatest cemetery because of spectacular collection of beautiful and erotic statues, Final I felt intrusively although he tries to show respect, he visit the dying rooms where relatives are brought in their last moments and prepared for cremation by the sacred waters of the Ganges.
The evening viewing was ended by keeping one eye on the a contemporary production using latest technology of Battlestar Gallactica 2004 2008. For a few moments I had a moment of panic because I was certain that I had seen the Battlestar Gallactica series and films in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s but it took time for me to find any trace!
As promised yesterday I begin today with the summing up by LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: of the Inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed. It should be read by anyone who has been or remains inclined to the conspiracy viewpoint. There are some debriefing points which should be made but these will following when all the summing up has been studied. Part one is as follows:
"Members of the jury, for the last ten and a half years, there have been those who claimed that what happened in the Alma Tunnel was no tragic accident but a staged collision intended to cause and in fact causing the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, along with the driver, Henri Paul, and Dodi Al Fayed. Foremost among those claimants has been Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father. There are no doubt those who genuinely believe this to be the case and will continue to do so regardless of any verdict you return. You have heard the evidence and it is your decision that matters and not anyone else’s. You will have been reassured to have heard that Mohamed Al Fayed told you on oath that he will accept your verdicts. No doubt the other interested persons will do likewise. But these inquests, despite the time that they have taken and the cost, have served an important purpose.
The conspiracy theories and the rumour and suspicion that they have generated and that have in many instances been encouraged by the media have been examined in the minutist detail through the evidence of over 250 witnesses. "
No one, except you and I, and I think the gentleman in the public gallery with "Diana" and "Dodi" painted on his forehead has sat through every word of evidence.
No one is as well equipped as you are to decide the facts of the case. The benefit of these last six months is that various propositions that were being asserted have been shown to be so demonstrably without foundation that they are no longer being pursued by Mohamed Al Fayed’s lawyers, even if he still carries the belief of their truth in his own mind. They are not being pursued because there is not a shred of evidence to support them.
Foremost among them is the proposition that Diana was assassinated by the Secret Intelligence Service on the orders of the Duke of Edinburgh. There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Diana’s execution and there is no evidence that the Secret Intelligence Service or any other Government agency organised it.
Mr Horwell, Queen’s Counsel, suggested during cross-examination that one of the features of conspiracy theories is that as one allegation is shown to be unfounded, so another crops up and so on. Thus, we have moved from the Duke ordering assassination to a suggestion that he created a "serious climate of hostility". He was not himself guilty of any crime, but his views fed into the thinking of the day. Those who are committed to the interests of the Monarchy may have formed their own view as to what would be in the
Monarchy’s best interests and how best to protect it from perceived threats. It may have been, so it is said, such persons who independently staged the crash in the tunnel in order to frighten or injure Diana if not actually intending to kill her, and that this was done in the interests of Queen and Country.
One reason, perhaps the reason, why the conspiracy has shifted from the original allegation that the Duke of Edinburgh was its mastermind is the unprecedented manner in which the Secret Intelligence Service and indeed others have been prepared to open their doors and give evidence about their inner workings. No longer can it be said, as Mohamed Al Fayed has frequently
complained, that there was a steel wall that it was completely impossible to penetrate.
The allegations against the Duke of Edinburgh are not the only subjects of rumour and suspicion that have been dispelled by our wide-ranging examination of the evidence. As I said at the beginning of the inquests, I expected that, as we progressed, some issues would fall away and others would come to the fore. This has proved to be so. What are the possible verdicts? First, applying
the law, I have determined that it is not open to you to find that this was unlawful killing by the Duke of Edinburgh or anyone else in a staged accident. I shall explain why shortly. It is, however, open to you to find unlawful killing due to the gross negligence of the following vehicles in the manner in which they were following and hounding the Mercedes. It is also open to you to find unlawful killing through the gross negligence of Henri Paul because of the speed and manner of his driving and any alcohol he may have consumed.
Further, it is open to you to find unlawful killing by both the following vehicles and Henri Paul together. If none of these verdicts is established, it is open to you to find accidental death in that the collision was caused through one or more causes, without gross negligence on anyone’s part. Finally, it is possible for you to return an open verdict if you conclude that the evidence does not establish any of the other verdicts.
I shall explain shortly what is necessary to establish each of these five verdicts and the standard of proof required to do so. In due course I shall sum up the evidence to you and, at various points, link that evidence to the legal directions I am about to give you.
We have spent much of the last six months considering whether the collision in the Alma Tunnel all those years ago may have been anything more than a tragic accident. In other words, whether anyone staged what happened. Later this week you will be retiring to consider your verdicts. The decisions you make will be important ones and they are yours and yours alone. But before that, I have to sum the case up to you. In doing so, I have two tasks. I have to direct you on the law and you must accept, without question, my directions on the law; secondly, I shall summarise the facts and, in doing so, I shall draw your attention
to what appear to me to be the more important issues in the case.
But just as the law is for me, so the facts are for you. It is for you to decide what evidence is relevant and significant, what evidence you accept and reject, and which witnesses you think are honest and liable It is your view that counts and not any view you may think I have. So if you think I have a view about a particular aspect of the evidence and it does not accord with yours, reject it. Equally, if I do not refer, in the course of this summing-up, to evidence which you consider important, you must not feel tempted to ignore it. You must consider all the evidence My direction in law to you is, as I have said, that it is not open to you to find that Diana and Dodi were unlawfully killed in a staged accident. Why, you may ask, is this so? Surely that is just what we, the jury, are here to decide. The answer s this: the law is clear -- and no one has argued otherwise -- that unless there is sufficient evidence upon which a jury can conclude that they are sure a deceased was unlawfully killed in a particular way, the Coroner is required to take the burden on his own shoulders and withdraw that verdict from the jury.
When a coroner leaves a verdict of unlawful killing, in this case on the basis of a staged accident, to a jury, he must identify to the jury the evidence on which they could be sure of such a conclusion. But in this case sufficient evidence simply does not exist. Speculation, surmise and belief are one thing; evidence is another.
This does not, however, mean that all the suggestions you have heard about the possibility of a staged crash are irrelevant. Because there is some evidence, albeit limited and of doubtful quality, that the crash was staged, it will be necessary for you to consider it in the context of the five verdicts that are open to you.
If you are not satisfied so you are sure that this was unlawful killing by the following vehicles or Henri Paul and you do not think that the crash was probably an accident, you would return an open verdict. So if you thought that the crash had probably been staged, you would return an open verdict. Whatever your verdict, whether unlawful killing, accident or open, it must be unanimous. There are circumstances in which a majority verdict can be accepted, but they have not arisen in this case and, if they do, I shall give you a separate direction about it.
You may be wondering why it is that over ten years after the event, you are considering, in the greatest detail, matters said to be relevant to the crash in the Paris underpass on 31st August 1997. In the first place there always had to be an inquest because
the deaths of Diana and Dodi were unnatural and their bodies were returned to this country. But why the delay and why the great detail?
The fact that one of the dead was Diana, Princess of Wales, created the most enormous media interest, and even leaving aside Mohamed Al Fayed, there were mutterings from the start, "Was this really an accident?" The paparazzi involvement triggered the French investigation. Then there was the Paget inquiry. Finally Mohamed Al Fayed has continued to pursue his allegations with vigour and persistence, and no doubt at considerable cost, determined to leave not even the smallest stone unturned.
As you have been reminded on many occasions, this is an inquiry and I have considered it appropriate to look into many issues to confirm or allay suspicion The very fact that these allegations have been circulating during the last ten years, and, I would add, not only coming from Mohamed Al Fayed, makes it important to put matters to rest one way or the other, once and for all. Many of the rumours you may think, if not media-generated, have been media-encouraged, and where there is no substance in them, it is in everyone’s interests that this should be shown to be the case,
rather than they be left in the air.
The fact that there has been evidence about a topic does not of itself mean that it is necessary for me to remind you of it in any detail in summing-up or even that it has any relevance to the questions that you have to decide. We have, as I pointed out to Mr Mansfield QC, during the evidence of Sir John Adye, the former head of GCHQ, chased a lot of hares since last October. No one who has not lost a child or a very close loved one can perhaps ever truly comprehend the devastating effect of such a loss and how it gnaws away at one. You will, I am sure, have great sympathy for
Mohamed Al Fayed and his family because of that. You will also, I am sure, have in mind that not only was Diana an iconic figure, but also that two sons have lost a wonderful and devoted mother and that they too have suffered an irreparable loss, a loss which must be the harder to bear because not only of the intimate
details that have been publicised during the case, but
also their every move is watched so intently by the world’s media.11 It was not only her sons who lost a mother, but other family members who lost a sister and a daughter. You will have sympathy too for the frail parents of Henri Paul. But the bottom line, embers of the jury, is you are charged with returning a verdict on
the evidence and you must decide and assess what you make of the evidence, dispassionately putting your own emotions, whatever they may be, on one side Your duty is to find the facts and reach
a conclusion on the evidence, and that transcends any desire, for example, to mark your disapproval of anyone’s behaviour or to make a statement of some kind. It is true that whatever your verdict, it is likely to be seen as a defining moment. But you must
disregard, when you come to analyse the evidence, that this is no ordinary case and decide it as you would any other.
This is no ordinary case and the inquest has been no ordinary inquest. It does not need me to tell you that the collision in the tunnel and the resultant deaths of Diana, Dodi and Henri Paul have caused millions of words to be written, been the subject of numerous television programmes and generated a multitude of newspaper and magazine articles as well as books. There has been seemingly endless speculation, both in this country and
abroad.
Up and down the land and indeed throughout the world there are those who have firm views about the case, but, as I have said, you are the ones who have listened to every word of evidence and, most importantly, been able to see and assess every person who has given oral evidence.
Each of you has taken an oath to inquire into the deaths and return verdicts according to the evidence, and anyone who has been in court will be aware of the enormous time, care and commitment that each of you has given to this case. Because of the background that I have described and the amount of information and disinformation circulating in the media, these inquests have involved a far more wide-ranging inquiry than would be appropriate in most inquests. Apart from the inquiries by the French and
the Metropolitan Police, Mohamed Al Fayed has, as you have heard, conducted his own investigation, headed by Mr John McNamara, his former head of security. The reasons why these inquests have been so wide-ranging is, as I have said many times, to confirm or allay rumour or suspicion. Many issues have been investigated in evidence that have turned out to have no or minimal bearing on what you have to decide. But it is important that we have heard evidence about these matters, otherwise people would be able to say in the future that the inquests did not consider this or that, and if they had done so, your decision might have been different.
You have a complete transcript of all 30 lever-arch files of the evidence and it is there for you to refer to during your deliberations, if you need it. But I strongly advise against trying to read it through from beginning to end. It is there for your reference if you need it. Your assessments and impressions of the evidence will have been accumulating over time and those assessments and impressions are very important. I have said it so many times already that it probably does not need saying again, but you decide the case on the evidence you have heard in this court and not on anything you may have seen, read or heard else where. So continue to ignore media reports. It is especially important not to conduct your own investigations on the internet because so many things said about this case out of court have turned out to be inaccurate, if not plainly wrong. One of the features of this case is the numerous
occasions on which witnesses have said things else where before they came here to give evidence to you. Obvious examples are statements to Paget officers and statements to the French judge or made in the French inquiry. Numerous books and articles have been written too, some by those who have given evidence to you, others by posts on their behalf. Bear in mind this statement of the obvious, that what sells books is their contents You may think that some accounts written by some authors are either plainly untrue or at least contain embellishments of the truth. You will wish to bear in mind that witnesses have been speaking about events many years go and recollections fade. It is easy to confuse what you remember with what you have heard, read or seen somewhere else. The collision took place over ten years ago. Unsurprisingly, many witnesses have been reminded about what they have said in statements made nearer the time. Sometimes they have agreed that that is their best or, on occasions, only recollection. In other instances, witnesses have been cross-examined on the basis that years before they said something contradictory to their evidence to you and the suggestion is that what they said to you cannot be relied on. You will also bear in mind that first-hand evidence is more likely to be reliable than second-hand evidence. What a witness saw or heard with their own eyes or years is likely to be more reliable than what someone else told them they saw or heard, and there has been a good deal of second-hand and even third-hand evidence in this case lots of evidence has been read to you. This falls into three categories. First, where what a witness says is uncontroversial, it obviously makes sense to read the evidence rather than bring the witness to court. An example is Dr Lipsedge, who dealt with the effect of head injuries on Trevor Rees’ memory. The second category is where the witness has died. Obviously the best we can do is read his evidence, but you must make allowances for the fact that there has been no opportunity to test what he says in cross-examination. The third category is where the witness’s evidence is not uncontroversial but, for some reason or another, he cannot be brought to court because, for example, he is abroad and refuses to give evidence or cannot be found. I have no power to compel the attendance of a witness who is outside England and Wales. The French authorities have given us considerable assistance in summoning witnesses and providing video link facilities, but the bottom line is that they have not compelled the attendance of witnesses who have refused to attend. In these circumstances, I have been obliged to call another witness to introduce their evidence. This has been the case with all the paparazzi except Darmon, the rider of Rat’s motorbike.
Some of these witnesses simply do not want to be involved in these proceedings so long after the event. Others have an axe to grind and may not wish to submit it themselves to cross-examination. The paparazzi are obvious examples. You must treat anything they said in their statements with particular care. They were under criminal investigation in France. It was obviously in their interests to distance themselves, if they could, from proximity to the Mercedes between the time it left the rear of the Ritz and the collision.
You have not heard in person from Professor Lecomte, Dr Pepin and others concerned with the analysis of Henri Paul’s samples, although you know in essence what is said by them second-hand through the English experts. It is a great pity they have not seen fit to give evidence because, as you have heard, there are a number
of serious criticisms about the professionalism of what they did. They have not explained what, if any, answer there is to apparent serious shortcomings on their part. There are question marks, therefore, about the conclusions to be drawn from the analysis of the blood samples said to have come from Henri Paul. I shall come to that in more detail in due course. There are no doubt some witnesses from whom you would like to have heard but have not. The paparazzi, Professor Lecomte and Dr Pepin are obvious examples. But you have to decide the case on the evidence that you have heard. When I opened the case to you, I explained that it was not necessary for you to solve every subplot, unravel every thread, although we have gone a good deal further in this case than we would ordinarily go.
In a case where someone dies suddenly, it is perhaps inevitable that there will be things about them or their lives that are quite unexplained, even to those who knew them best, but which, if they were alive, could be readily explained. And this may also be true of others who, for whatever reason, have not given evidence in
person to you. Things can assume mysterious proportions or even look potentially sinister when, if only you had heard from the witness, there might be a perfectly good explanation. Then again, there might not be. A good example is perhaps Dr Dumestre Toulet’s receipt. Before we heard from her, you might have been
thinking, "How has Dr Pepin got a receipt for sending
blood to her on a date which is after the date when she analysed it?" It is a matter for you, but it may be that after you heard from her, you accepted her explanation that it was a receipt for the report that she had sent to him after the analysis had been carried
out. Finally, before I leave the subject of witnesses generally, I want to say a word about expert witnesses; that is those who have been asked to review aspects of the evidence and express an opinion. You have heard from a number of these. Professor Treasure and Professor Forrest are examples. There are others,
including those who helped to reconstruct the collision. Such witnesses, members of the jury, do not give evidence primarily to establish facts, but to help you to interpret them in the light of their expertise. You are not obliged to accept an expert’s evidence any more than that of any other witness. They give opinion evidence to assist you, based on their expertise. Several experts sought to assist you as to the correct interpretation of the pathology and
toxicology evidence relating to Henri Paul. Sometimes experts disagree and it is for you to decide who you accept or what evidence you accept and what evidence you reject.
There was, for example, disagreement between experts about the precise point on the road where the collision took place between the Mercedes and the white Fiat Uno. Experts are entitled to give evidence as to facts as well as opinion evidence, and, indeed, some of the experts, such as Professor Forrest, gave evidence of fact of procedures carried out by French scientists. This was helpful in the absence of those scientists. I must also remind you once again that the conclusions of the Paget inquiry and the French inquiry are not relevant to your verdict. Neither had the opportunity of considering all the evidence that you have listened to and heard tested in cross-examination over the past six months.
The other point I should emphasise once again about the evidence is that these are not adversarial proceedings, as are criminal or civil litigation, but an inquiry to establish how two people came by their deaths and to confirm or allay rumour or suspicion about their deaths.
Further, you only act on evidence and not on a person’s assertion or belief unless it is supported by evidence. It is true that you can draw inferences from evidence, but the evidence must be there in the first place from which to draw the inference. An inference is no more than a common sense conclusion based on the evidence which you accept Sometimes a jury is asked to find some fact proved by direct evidence; for example, if there is reliable evidence from a witness who actually saw an event; if there is CCTV evidence recording a fact. These would be good examples of direct evidence. On the other hand it is often the case that direct evidence of some facts not available and circumstantial evidence has to be relied upon. That simply means placing reliance upon evidence of various circumstances relating to the factor facts which, when taken together, will lead to a sure conclusion concerning the fact. circumstantial evidence can be powerful evidence, but it is important that you examine it with care and consider whether the evidence is reliable and proves the relevant fact. In looking at circumstantial evidence, you need to consider any other circumstances which may be of sufficient reliability to strengthen or weaken your conclusions. Finally, you should be careful to distinguish between arriving at conclusions based on
reliable circumstantial evidence and mere speculation. Speculating in a case amounts to no more than guessing or making up theories without good evidence to support them. You must not do that.
In criminal cases, where a conspiracy is alleged based upon concrete evidence, juries are generally directed that it is rare to have direct evidence oaf criminal conspiracy because when people make agreements to commit crimes, they can be expected to do
so privately and without committing themselves to writing. For that reason, juries in such cases are also directed that they should look at evidence of the behaviour of the accused during the relevant period to determine whether they were involved in a conspiracy.
All that is good common sense. However, it does not mean that a jury in any case can indulge in guesswork or speculation.
Lies: one of the regrettable features of this case is the number of people who it appears have told lies in the witness box or elsewhere. Some are liars by their own admission. I refer to James Adamson, Paul Burrell and John McNamara. Others have either admitted telling half truths or part of their evidence may have shown, in one respect or more, that either in court or previously
they were not telling the truth. But I must give you this direction.
You must first decide whether the person whose evidence you are considering has lied, rather than having made an honest mistake. If you conclude that he has, you must then go on to bear this in mind. People tell lies for a variety of different reasons, for example, because they think it is in the interests of their employer or to further their own interests or they want to be in the limelight or they have a grudge against some other individual or to embellish their case. It does not follow that because you are satisfied that a witness has lied on one or some matters, that nothing he has told you can be relied on. It may be that the whole of a witness’s evidence is demonstrably unreliable, like, for example, Morel, but that is no necessarily the case. There is a particular problem with the paparazzi. The only member of the paparazzi from whom you have heard oral evidence is Darmon, and, strictly speaking, he was not a paparazzo, although, for practical purposes, we have treated him as one. It was said that part of his evidence amounted to a series of self-serving lies. You heard him give evidence and you will form your own view to what extent he was telling the truth. You have not had that advantage with the other paparazzi. When their evidence was introduced through Commissaire Gigou and Inspector Carpenter, it was pointed out that what some of them had said in their statements appeared to be untrue. You have not had the advantage of hearing them being tested about it. As I said at the beginning of these inquests and have repeated from time to time, it is your duty diligently to inquire into the deaths of Diana and Dodion the evidence you have heard in court. You must not be influenced by any external matters such as media reports or information that you had accumulated in the years before you began to hear the evidence. It is for that reason that I directed you not to speak to anyone outside the jury, including family and friends, about the case, to ensure that you were not subject to unintended influences. Members of the jury, that remains very important. Additionally, I emphasised that you should not seek information from elsewhere, for example the internet. That too remains an important matter. All 11 of you are responsible for returning verdicts and conclusions in these inquests. Therefore, as I said at the beginning, you should only discuss the case amongst yourselves when you are all present, in the privacy of your jury room. So please continue to remember not to discuss the case in small groups when other members of the jury are not present. Very rarely, something may happen (either outside your jury room, egg someone not on the jury apparently trying to speak to you about the case, or inside the jury room itself) which causes you real concern. If any of you has such a concern, especially after your retire to consider your verdicts and conclusions, please inform me about it at once, discreetly in a written note. Do not leave it until after the case is over because it might then be impossible to put matters right. I should say something about the advocates. Counsel the inquests, Mr Burnett QC, Mr Hilliard QC and Mr Hough, are here to act entirely impartially and examine the witnesses first on facts relevant to the inquiry. They have also tested the evidence of witnesses. Interested persons are entitled to be represented. Not all have chosen to be Counsel for the interested persons are here to represent their clients and are entitled to bring out any additional facts that may be perceived to be relevant to their clients and to challenge evidence with which their clients disagree. As I have had to reminds some of them more than once, the proceedings are not adversarial. As I have already told you, an inquest is a fact-finding exercise. The Coroners Rules prohibit any verdict that appears to determine civil liability generally or criminal liability of a named person.
I shall return in a moment to give you a fuller explanation of what this means, but it limits what you are entitled to say when you return your verdicts. I now turn to direct you in law on the verdicts you may return. You are about to be handed a hard copy of what I am now saying. You will probably wish to refer to this later and it may help you to have it so that you can follow it as speak it.
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