Henri Paul, the driver of the car in
which Princess Diana was killed, spent his last several hours in and
around a hotel bar but there was no sign he was drunk, security camera
footage shows.
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, with driver Henri Paul, prepare to leave
the Ritz-Carlton Hotel by the service entrance. Minutes later, all
three would be killed in a car crash.
The surveillance video was played today for the jury hearing the
inquest into the deaths of Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed. The
couple died along with Paul when their speeding car slammed into the
wall of a Paris tunnel early on Aug. 31, 1997.
In the video, Paul is seen chatting and joking with Diana and Fayed
as they wait by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel service entrance for the car
that would take them on what would be their final journey. The couple
left by the back way in a vain effort to elude paparazzi.
The princess and her new love interest seem happy together in the
video. Fayed has an arm around Diana’s waist, and she leans against him.
Once the car arrives, Diana and Fayed jump in and Paul drives off,
followed by photographers Serge Benhamou, Jacques Langevin, David
Odekerken and Fabrice Chassery.
About 15 minutes later, Paul would lose control of the car and crash. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was the only survivor.
The video shown today focused on Paul. The acting head of security
at the hotel, Paul was not normally employed as a driver and he did not
expect to be working late that night. He went off duty at 7 p.m. and
was summoned back at 10 p.m.
In the interim, he is shown making at least two trips to a hotel
bar. He also makes five visits to the front of the luxury hotel, where
a pack of paparazzi were gathered. But it's not clear how he spent the
entire three-hour period when he was off the clock.
Interestingly, Paul is shown waving to two photographers at one point.
French investigators and a Scotland Yard inquiry found that Paul had
double the legal limit of alcohol in his system at the time of the
crash.
But Fayed's father, billionaire mogul Mohamed Al Fayed, claims blood
samples were switched to make it look as if Paul were drunk.
Al Fayed, who owns the Ritz-Carlton in Paris as well as Harrods
department store in London, believes Paul was a paid informer for
British and French intelligence and that Diana and Dodi were murdered
to prevent them from marrying.
The 11-member jury also watched a seven-minute video made by an
Australian tourist. It captures the excitable, almost circus-like
atmosphere outside the hotel as photographers and onlookers gather.
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