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LONDON - The judge investigating the death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash 10 years ago challenged Mohamed al Fayed on Monday to back up his allegations that she and his son Dodi were murdered.
Fayed, owner of the luxury Harrods department store, has long argued that the couple were victims of a plot hatched by British security services.
In a dramatic clash with Fayed's lawyers at a preliminary hearing into their deaths, coroner Elizabeth Butler-Sloss said: "It would be enormously helpful to me if I had some evidence from Mr al Fayed's team to support the allegations.
"There are a large number of serious allegations being made ... there is not a shred of evidence given to me about these allegations," she said. "If there is no evidence to support them, I shall not present them to the jury."
Fayed's lawyer, Michael Mansfield, called for Diana's ex-husband Prince Charles and his father the Duke of Edinburgh to be called as "witnesses of relevance" during the inquest, a move likely to be strongly resisted by lawyers for the royal family.
Diana, 36, Dodi, 42, and their chauffeur were killed when their Mercedes limousine smashed into a pillar in a Paris road tunnel as they sped away from the Ritz Hotel, pursued by paparazzi on motorbikes.
Mansfield also said Diana had premonitions and expressed fears about her safety. He had up to 18 witnesses to prove this, he said.
"It is clear she had fears," Butler-Sloss told the court crammed with reporters from around the globe, highlighting how great the interest still is in the "People's Princess".
A three-year British police investigation found last year that the crash was an accident and not part of a murder plot as Fayed claims.
The British inquiry backed a French probe which concluded that chauffeur Henri Paul, acting head of security at the Ritz which is owned by Fayed, was to blame because he was drunk, under the influence of anti-depressants and driving too fast.
Fayed has rejected both British and French findings.
The inquest has taken a decade to come to court as Britain had to wait for the French legal process to be exhausted and then for the British police investigation to run its course.
Last week Fayed won a major legal challenge after High Court judges ruled that the inquest should be heard before a jury and not by Butler-Sloss sitting alone.
Appeal court judge Janet Smith, handing out the ruling, said: "Mr Al Fayed has alleged that the Duke of Edinburgh and the Security Services conspired to kill the princess and Dodi Al Fayed. The allegation must be inquired into."
After a day of tortuous legal argument, Butler-Sloss conceded that if she could not start the actual inquest in May as planned, then October was a more likely start date.
Mansfield had argued that the full inquest should be delayed until then to give him time to study reports and expert opinion.
"A six-month delay is a pebble on the beach compared with what has happened so far," he said before agreeing to March 21-22 as the date for the next preliminary hearing.
Under British law an inquest is needed to formally determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.
- REUTERS
