Diana Inquest: Coroner - 'Philip Did Not Order Execution'
Written by Joanne Leyland
Monday, 31 March 2008
The coroner at the inquest into the deaths of Diana,
Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed has started his summing up of the case,
telling the jury that there is "no evidence" that Prince Philip ordered MI6 to execute
his former daughter-in-law.
Addressing Court 73 ahead of laying out the main points of the inquest almost
six months since the process began, Lord Justice Scott-Baker told the jury: "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."
Mohamed
Al Fayed’s conspiracy theories were dismissed by the coroner as being "so
demonstrably without foundation" that even the legal team representing the
Harrods boss have now backed away from his claims that the
inteligence services murdered the princess on the orders of the Queen's
husband.
The inquest having now heard from more than 250 people, including friends and
associates of the princess, as well as members of the security services, the
coroner will continue the summing up process before the jury is sent out to
consider its verdict as to how Diana and Dodi Fayed lost their lives in the early hours of August 31st 1997.
Comment: A very to-the-point letter from 'The Guardian'
Diana inquest verdict The Guardian, Wednesday April 2 2008
This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday April 02 2008 on p35 of the Leaders & reply section. It was last updated at 00:06 on April 02 2008.
" I have followed the Diana inquest closely and been absorbed by the contradictory evidence. I simply cannot accept that the coroner has any right to withdraw from the jury the opportunity to find that she was "unlawfully killed" by a third party.
While I can appreciate that no evidence to implicate the Duke of Edinburgh has emerged, there certainly is evidence for unlawful killing by a third party other than the paparazzi or Henri Paul.
As Michael Mansfield QC has repeated throughout, it is for the jury to determine the truthfulness or otherwise of the evidence. The jury will now not be able to pass their verdict on the contradictions in the evidence surrounding Henri Paul's postmortem, Diana's engagement and pregnancy, the claims of her friends, employees and family, or the less than convincing evidence of the security service and police officers, who failed to provide relevant evidence to the coroner at the earliest opportunity."
Dr Rory Ridley-Duff Sheffield
Name: exploora
Comment: I can say one thing about the RF, they sure can make people feel their own family is highly functional in comparison to theirs.
And even less tragic.
Of course not as rich, materially. But sometimes that doesn't matter especially in this case.
Name: anyacat
Comment: The summation is not complete, as noted in the article above, "the corner wil continue the summing up process before the jury is sent out to consider its verdict as to how Diana and Dodi Fayed lost their lives..."
Name: Monika
Comment: Regardless of the side one is on, I doubt this comes as a shock.
Name: Emily Elizabeth Windsor-Cragg
Comment: It seems odd to me that this case would run off in a direction, accusing Philip and leaving other matters untouched.
But I'm sure the Jury by now has a sense of what is being spoken of and what is being left to silence.
