Paris police savour vindication over Diana

Paris is pleased this morning that the elaborate British inquiry into the death of Princess Diana has come up with the same conclusions as the original French investigation.

Chief Commissioner Martine Monteil [pictured], the officer who led the French police investigation into the 1997 crash, told me this morning that she had never been concerned that Lord Stevens would come up with anything else. "We are quite satisfied but we were never very worried about the conclusions," said Monteil, who is now Director of the National Judicial Police -- equivalent to Britain's CID. "The findings go in the same direction as our own and that's the main thing."

She added: "I absolutely never doubted that it was an accident."

Monteil,  56, a tough cop and pioneering woman in the traditionally very male police force, was the boss of the Paris Brigade Criminelle -- the serious crime squad -- at the time of the crash, on August 31, 1997.

"I wouldn't normally have been involved in a car crash, but I was appointed in view of the importance of the people involved," she recalled today. "We understood that this would be a case that would resonate around the planet."

"It was quite a delicate case, with a lot of pressure. I understood absolutely that this was not an ordinary job. .. We understood that it required extremely careful work and that's what we did. I told my team at the time: 'We have to nail down everything so noone could say years later that we missed something.' We did the maximum possible. Some of the French media even complained that we had run the most expensive investigation in the world."

Monteil was too polite to say it, but the French were seriously annoyed by the scepticism that sections of the British media displayed towards their investigation, which concluded in 1999 that the crash was a simple accident. Monteil said she had no objections to a separate British inquiry but she recalled that the British police were on hand in Paris throughout their original investigation.

The days after the crash on a late August Saturday night were quite mad for British journalists in Paris, of which I was one. It was not just a matter of trying to report the events of the final car journey from the Ritz hotel to the tunnel by the Alma bridge.

We spent much of the time fending off nonsense that was invented by squads of reporters from London and published in their newspapers. We lost count of the quotes from "witnesses" fabricated by non-French-speaking news hounds and the non-existent bars where fictional friends of Henri Paul were said to have had their last drinks with the driver. If you read the tabloids, it seemed that the Place Vendome was stuffed with jewellers who had all sold Dodi Fayed an engagement ring for the Princess of Wales.

It remains clear, though, that the expenditure of millions of pounds and euros on two investigations will do little to kill the conspiracy theories.

Comments

[Edward Johns]

This ludicrous saga about a routine road accident involving excess speed, intoxicated driver and the non-wearing of seat belts illustrates perfectly the downside of freedom of the press. Newspaper sales since the accident must have contributed millions (of whatever currency you like) to the media industry.
I've seen more plausible conspiracy theories on the X-files.

[Alaqn Maxwell Innes Nicholson]

The saga about Diana's road accident report is wholly flawed, as any idiot can detect - for the other main actor in this matter has never been found - that is, the white car and driver which collided with Dodi and Diana. What incompetence!

[Edward Johns]

If the driver of every vehicle who decamped from the scene of a road accident were to be detected would we not be living in a police state ?
Or was the royal status of one the victims of this particular road accident enough to demand extra special treatment? (Perhaps the conspirators who brought about these murders used a fiendish new drug on the back-seat passengers which prevented them from putting on their seat-belts ?)

[garth wiseman]

With the conspiracy explanation now having been disproven it would appear that any responsibility for the accident lies with with the Fayeds. In particular three errors of judgement suggest themselves. firstly the route taken, secondly the speed driven, thirdly the use of a security officer rather than a professional driver. All three were decisions made between them by Fayed father and son. It will be interesting to see how long before the finger is pointed at them now that MI6 and CIA etc are off the hook.

[Frank Schnittger]

The prevalence of conspiracy theories tells us more about the mindset of those who hold them than about the actual events on the night in question. The hero worship of Diana, the loathing of aspects of the Royal family, the bitterness of Al Fayed and his exclusion from British society, the need to sell newspapers, contempt for the French, the spy thriller appeal of the plot - glamour, celebrity, wealth, power, invasion of privacy, controversy, sex appeal - it had it all. Why spoil a good story with the facts?

[christopher muir]

It's interesting to contemplate what still crazier theories would have surfaced via the internet had the accident happenened after 9/11. Doubtless, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan would have been written into various exploitative scenarios.

[M. Fernandez, San Francisco, California]

Mossad. It can't be a proper conspiracy theory unless the Israelis are involved. The white car perhaps? Maybe it had a blue Star of David on the door.

I agree with Frank Schnittger. The conspiracies say more about the public obsessed with them than it does about reality. Diana had a symbiotic and mutually exploitive relationship with the media. They made her a star and she made them money. Now that she is dead, the press will continue to cash in. For those to whom she is more than just a beautiful but disturbed woman (a la Marilyn Monroe), it seems implausible that someone so 'other worldly' should be brought down by something as mundane as drunk driving, seat belts and speeding. To many, it seems impossible that JFK could have been killed by a socially inept young man with a high-power rifle.

The truth is sometimes so simple it is impossible to believe.

[Robin Midwood]

This contribution will possibly make me very umpopular!!!.Why do we have to continue this navel serching !!!?.There are even greater problems to seek explanations for than this sorry saga.We seem to live in a world where people will not let things rest.Please lets finnish this saga, once and for all (OK my remark is a part of the problem NOW SILENCE.) The world is so mixed up. Onwards and upwards

[Sedulia]

I actually came upon the accident shortly after it happened. [http://www.ruerude.com/2006/09/princess_diana_.html]
I could see the car only from the rear seat backwards, but I remember feeling relief that the people in the car would be fine.

If Diana had worn her seat belt she would be alive today.

[Feel free to take this comment off if you like.]