Diana was unlawfully killed, U.K. jury rules

LONDON — After six months of hearings and testimony by more than 250 witnesses, a jury at a British inquest found Monday that Princess Diana and her lover, Dodi al Fayed, were unlawfully killed by the negligent driving of their chauffeur and photographers who pursued the couple's speeding Mercedes into a Paris underpass over 10 years ago.

The case has seized attention in Britain and around the world since then, with rumors, conspiracy theories and allegations swirling around the road crash in August, 1997, that snuffed out the life of a woman whom Tony Blair, the former prime minister, called the "people's princess." Coming soon after her divorce from Prince Charles, her death inspired a wave of soul-searching among Britons that threatened to dissolve their attachment to the monarchy.

An earlier police inquiry had found that Diana and Fayed had died in a tragic accident as they sought to escape the attentions of the paparazzi photographers camped outside the Ritz Hotel in Paris owned by Mohamed al Fayed, Dodi's father. They were being driven to Dodi al Fayed's apartment.

But Fayed insisted that his son and the Princess had been killed in a conspiracy by the British security services acting under instruction from Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

The judge presiding at the inquest, Lord Justice Scott Baker, had ordered the jury to discount those allegations.

The jury's finding Monday was a majority verdict and represented the toughest judgment available to the panel of six women and five men, who began to deliberate their decision April 2.

During the hearings they had been told that a verdict of unlawful killing was tantamount to manslaughter.

The verdict surprised some people who had forecast that the inquest would confirm the previous police assessment that the crash, which also killed the French driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, had been an accident. But the jury resolved that the "crash was caused, or contributed to, by the speed and manner of the driver of the Mercedes and the speed and manner of the pursuing vehicles."

The jury reached its decision by a majority vote of 9-2. Among the causes of recklessness, the panel found that Paul's judgment had been impaired by alcohol. Other contributing factors included the fact that Diana, in the rear of the car with Fayed, had not been wearing a seat belt and that the Mercedes slammed headlong into a pillar when it crashed after entering the Alma underpass at more than 95 kilometers per hour, or 60 miles per hour, twice the speed limit for that section of road.

Fayed senior, who had pressed for years for a public inquiry, said he was disappointed at the result of the inquest, insisting that members of the royal family should have been called as witnesses.

"No-one should be above the law," he said in a written statement that suggested he had not abandoned his belief that Diana was murdered.

Apart from considering the exact circumstances of Diana's death, the inquest also shone an unforgiving spotlight into details of her private life that had been previously been kept secret.

Highly unusually, members of the Britain's MI6 secret services were called to testify that they had not mounted a conspiracy to assassinate her. Fayed has frequently insisted that Diana was pregnant with his son's child and was killed to prevent her from bearing the child. But the presiding judge, Scott Baker, said the theory was "without substance."

The inquest cost around $6 million but the overall cost of investigations into the road-crash was around $20 million.

The start of the inquest was delayed until French legal processes were complete and the British police inquiry had reached its separate findings. Charges of manslaughter in France were brought against nine photographers who pursued the Mercedes and took photographs after it crashed. None of those paparazzi were found guilty in the manslaughter proceedings but three photographers were convicted in 2006 of invading privacy.

In December, 2006, a British police inquiry found that the deaths had been an accident. "Our conclusion is that, on the evidence available at this time, there was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car," John Stevens, who led the inquiry, told reporters at the time. "This was a tragic accident."

On Monday, the jury's finding raised the question of whether criminal charges against the paparazzi could be revived. However, on Monday, Stevens said he hoped "everyone will take this as closure."