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The driver of the Mercedes in which Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed, were killed in a Paris road tunnel 10 years ago met the French paparazzi five times in the hours before the fatal car crash, the inquest into the couple's deaths was told yesterday.
Previously unseen CCTV footage shown to the jury also shows Henri Paul signalling to two French photographers minutes before he leads Diana and Dodi out of the back entrance of The Ritz hotel in Paris and into a waiting vehicle. The pictures cast doubt on the belief that the hordes of paparazzi waiting outside the hotel had been acting without any help from inside the hotel.
The new footage was seized on by Mohamed al-Fayed's barrister, Michael Mansfield QC, who cross-examined a Metropolitan Police officer who had worked with Lord Stevens on his report into the car crash.
Mansfield asked Inspector Paul Carpenter whether it was correct that Paul went into the square where the photographers were gathered five times in just one-and-a-half hours.
The officer replied: "Yes, sir."
Carpenter also confirmed to the court that Paul had waved at the photographers within minutes of the couple's departure.
Carpenter had earlier explained to the jury: "You will see Henri Paul exit into Rue Cambon [at the back of the hotel] and when you watch this sequence you will see him raise his hand as if waving to the paparazzi across the road. If you look at the paparazzi across the road you will see one of them raises his camera ... "
Fayed contends that Paul was working for MI6 and played a crucial role in the alleged murder of Diana and his son.
Pictures also pick up Paul visiting the hotel bar on two occasions during the evening, although no cameras are in the bar to show whether he consumed any alcohol there.
Fayed believes Paul, deputy head of security at The Ritz, was set up by MI6 to show that he was a drunk driver. Samples taken from his body show that he had consumed twice the UK legal drink-drive limit.
- Independent
