This one involving the death of Princess Diana:
LONDON — After six months of sensational testimony, the inquest into the death of Princess Diana began its final phase on Monday, with the coroner using his summation to dismiss any conspiracy theories involving the royal family or secret service in her death and to rebuke their relentless, deep-pocketed accuser, Mohammed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrod’s department store. .
The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, said there was nothing to support allegations that the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, “ordered Diana’s execution,” nor that Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6, or any other government agency played any part in the 1997 car crash that killed her and her lover, Mr. Fayed’s son Dodi.
“There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Diana’s execution and there is no evidence that the secret intelligence service or any other government agency organized it,” he said. The five possible verdicts he outlined available to the 11-member jury included unlawful killing through “the gross negligence” of the driver, Henri Paul, and “grossly negligent driving” by the paparazzi pursuing the couple. But, he added, “It is not open to you to find that Diana and Dodi were unlawfully killed in a staged accident.”
With British taxpayers’ costs for the inquest having passed $6 million, on top of at least twice that spent on earlier probes of the crash by the British and French authorities, the coroner’s summing-up appeared to bring the case full circle, back to facts that were known within weeks — or days — of the crash: that Diana and Dodi al-Fayed died when their car, driven at high speed by Mr. Paul, who was drunk and trying to outpace the paparazzi, smashed their Mercedes-Benz head-on into a concrete pillar in a tunnel under the Pont de l’Alma in Paris in the early hours of Aug. 31, 1997.
Can we all go back to talking about Lindsey Lohan now ?
