Silly Little Country

Reuters' Notion of Evidence

Today's Yahoo News included yet another of those articles about Diana-Dodi conspiracy theories.

The article, reporting on the inquest ongoing in the UK currently, reported as usual on Mohamed al_fayed's self-important notion that the royal family could be bothered to conduct a plot against his family.

But then the text becomes interesting.

Backing for his conspiracy theory was given in court on Thursday by Franz Klein, president of the Ritz Hotel in Paris where the couple spent their last hours in 1997, as he gave evidence to the inquest at London's High Court.

Hmm, I wondered, what evidence could this be? What sort of backing?

Klein, who was on holiday in the south of France at the time, broke the news by phone of Dodi's death to Mohamed al-Fayed whose instant reaction was to tell Klein: "I know more than you know or, more than you think."

"Mr Fayed, very calm, said to me: 'This is not an accident. This is ... a plot or an assassination'," Klein told the court.

Klein also told the court Dodi had told him he and Diana were going to get engaged and live in Villa Windsor, where Edward VIII and divorcee Wallis Simpson lived after the monarch's abdication. Mohamed al-Fayed had bought the Paris property.

"He did not mention the princess by name over the phone but he did tell me that he was going to stay in Paris to live. He told me he was going to move into the Villa Windsor with his girlfriend and he also told me, all the time in English, that they were going to get married," Klein said.

This is backing? The backing is that al-Fayed told him there was a conspiracy! I give up.

All the rest is amusing if barely relevant.

Klein has an even more profound ocntribution to make.

Those investigations concluded Diana and Dodi died because their chauffeur, Henri Paul, was drunk and drove too fast through a Paris road tunnel, crashing the vehicle into a pillar.

Asked if he thought Henri Paul had a drinking problem, Klein told the court: "Not at all."

Hmm, let's see. Henri Paul was an employee of the Ritz. Sure helps the Ritz if we get rid of those ugly suggestions about drunkenness on the job.

What amazes me is that that Reuters article was actually edited!

Labels: evidence Reuters Diana Dodi

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:04 PM