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Jurors for the inquest into the death of Princess Diana have been asked to ignore a decade of controversy about her fatal car crash in Paris.
Yesterday, the coroner overseeing the six-month inquest, Lord Justice Scott Baker, began selecting the 11 men and women who will determine once and for all how Diana died.
He took the unprecedented step of providing a police escort for each juror to ensure there is no harassment.
A random group of 80 men and women were chosen to take part in the rigorous jury selection process.
Baker told them that while millions of words had been spoken and written about the deaths of Diana and Dodi al Fayed, jurors would have to "put out of your mind anything you have heard out of court".
None had any idea they could be chosen for the Diana inquest until yesterday. Each had been told to report for jury duty at another London court but on arrival were put on a bus and taken to the inquest.
Baker said the secrecy surrounding the selection was necessary because people may have been tempted to research details about Diana's death if they knew in advance they could be jurors.
An annex with a live video link to the inquest has been put up in the court's grounds to cater for the hundreds of reporters and members of the public expected to attend.
Jurors will visit Paris to retrace Diana and Dodi's final journey from the Ritz Hotel, owned by his father, Mohamed al-Fayed, to the Pont de l'Alma tunnel where their Mercedes crashed on August 31, 1997. Their driver, Henri Paul, was also killed.
A French judge ruled in 1999 that the crash occurred because Paul had been drinking and was driving too fast. Fayed claims the couple were the victims of a murder plot cooked up by the Duke of Edinburgh and British agents.
- AAP
