No evidence Prince Philip or govt. involved in Diana's death: coroner

The coroner leading the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, said Monday there is no evidence that Prince Philip, the Secret Intelligence Service or any other government agency had anything to do with her death in a 1997 car crash.

Lord Justice Scott Baker told jurors they had the option of deciding that Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed died as the result of an accident, or as the result of gross negligence by the paparazzi following their car or by driver Henri Paul.

"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 organized it," he said.

Scott Baker said it was not open to the jury to find that Philip or anyone else had staged the Paris car accident that killed Diana, Fayed and Paul.

No evidence of conspiracy

Fayed's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has long claimed his son and Diana were killed in a plot orchestrated by the intelligence services and masterminded by Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth. He repeated the claims in testimony to the inquest.

Scott Baker began summing up Monday, opening the final chapter in an extraordinary inquest that began Oct. 2.

More than 240 witnesses have given evidence, including Diana's close friends, Prince Philip's private secretary, a former head of the Secret Intelligence Service and Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell.

Al Fayed's late bid to force the coroner to summon Prince Philip to testify, and for written questions to be put to the queen, was summarily rejected by a higher court.

There has been evidence that Diana feared dying in a car crash, but also had speculated about death in a helicopter or airplane crash; there was testimony that she feared Prince Philip, her former father-in-law.

The couple's car crashed as they were pursued from the Ritz Hotel by a pack of paparazzi photographers.

French police concluded the couple died in an accident, caused in part by excessive speed and by the high blood-alcohol level of Paul, the driver. A British police investigation reached the same conclusion.

'Not a shred of evidence'

As the inquest progressed, some distance opened between Al Fayed and the lawyers working for him.

Michael Mansfield, Al Fayed's main advocate, steered away from accusing Philip or of claiming that MI-6 assassinated the couple. He did suggest that rogue agents might have been involved.

"Mr. Al Fayed … has certain beliefs which he has made clear," Mansfield told the coroner on Feb. 20.

"He has certain beliefs and I have never at any stage withdrawn any of his beliefs but you will see I have focused very carefully on elements of what he is suggesting that may be true; in other words, for which there is, forensically, evidence to support his beliefs."

Scott Baker told the jury that some of Al Fayed's claims "have been shown to be so demonstrably without foundation that they are no longer being pursued by [his] lawyer, even if he still continues to believe in their truth in his own mind."

"They are not being pursued because there is not a shred of evidence to support them," he said.