by Will Pavia
Shortly before it smashed into the 13th pillar of the Alma Tunnel, the Mercedes carrying Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed collided with a white Fiat Uno, an incident that would be “virtually impossible” to engineer deliberately, an accident reconstruction specialist told their inquests yesterday.
After weeks of innuendo over the mysterious white car and accounts from witnesses attempting to recall the vehicle, its driver and the dog in the back, the jury were hearing the confident testimony of a British police officer and holding solid fragments of plastic, said to be part of a Fiat Uno’s brake light.
Anthony Read, a senior collision investigator from Scotland Yard, was discussing his investigation of the accident with two other experts for Lord Stevens’s investigation into the deaths of the Princess and Mr Fayed. He said that all three experts agreed that there was a collision near the entrance to the Alma Tunnel between the Mercedes driven by Henri Paul and a white Fiat Uno. The jury was handed three bags containing 21 red and 55 clear pieces of plastic. Mr Read said that all three investigators had been satisfied that “the red pieces of plastic were from the rear break cover of the left-hand side of a Fiat Uno, as fitted . . . between May of 1983 and September of 1989”. The car that has never been traced conclusively. They were equally satisfied that the clear pieces were from the front-right indicator of the Mercedes, he said.
The wreck of the Mercedes itself had been brought to Britain in two shipping containers for examination. Mr Read said that they had found “indications of white paint” on the crumpled front right wing of the car, as well as black plastic that “scientific examination showed had a composition consistent with the rear bumper of a Fiat Uno” of the same period.
Mr Fayed’s father Mohamed, the owner of Harrods, believes that the Fiat played a key role in a plot to murder the Princess.
The three investigators examined whether this collision could have been deliberately engineered. Mr Read thought it “virtually impossible”. He said that the Princess and Mr Fayed were in a Mercedes that was twice the weight of a Fiat Uno, and travelling twice as fast. “Had the impact been any more than a glancing blow the effect on the Fiat is going to be much greater than any sustained by the Mercedes.” The driver of the Fiat was far more likely to be killed, he said.
Mr Read said that it was “complete luck, if that is the right word, that the vehicle swerved right and then left”, striking the very corner of pillar 13, a narrow point of impact which meant that the Mercedes bonnet “didn’t deform quite as progressively as it was designed to” to absorb the impact.
The car struck the pillar at 60-70mph, he said. Had the passengers worn seat belts they would have had “an increased chance of surviving”, and had the car also been travelling at the speed limit of 31mph “I think we can almost guarantee it would be survivable”, he said.
He allowed that much of their investigation was based on “secondhand” evidence, on a day when the inquests were being denied first-hand evidence.
The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, expressed his “disappointment” that the paparazzi who pursued the Mercedes that night would not be compelled by the French authorities to give evidence. The French had decided that to compel them to do so raised questions of “order publique” as it could “damage relations between the media, the government and the general public”, the coroner said. Michael Mansfield QC, who represents Mr Al Fayed, argued that there was “missing film” from the paparazzi about which the photographers had never been questioned, and that the citation of “order publique” was incorrect.
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Richard Tomlinson says the way the Princess and her boyfriend died closely resembles a British secret service plan to eliminate Slobodan Milosevic. A New Zealander’s evidence could form a crucial piece of the puzzle as the world waits to hear the true story behind the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Richard Tomlinson, a renegade British secret service spy who was born in Ngaruawahia, is due to give evidence to the Royal Courts of Justice in London during the inquests into the 1997 deaths of the Princess and Dodi Al Fayed. Lord Justice Scott Baker, who is heading the inquests, has listed 20 key issues that he will focus on. And one of those is whether Mr Tomlinson’s evidence throws any light on the collision. Mr Tomlinson, a highly controversial figure who worked for MI6 and was later sacked by the organisation, claims the Princess’ death was curiously similar to a fate planned by MI6 for Serbian leader President Slobodan Milosevic in the early 1990s. He also claims the Princess and Al Fayed’s driver, Henri Paul, who was also killed in the crash, worked for MI6.
