Diana driver didn't seem drunk, says bodyguard
LONDON (AFP) — The driver of Princess Diana's doomed car did not seem to be drunk on the evening of her death in a Paris road tunnel, the bodyguard who survived the fatal crash said Wednesday.
Trevor Rees, the sole survivor of the crash that killed Diana, her lover Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul, said he would have stopped the Frenchman from getting behind the wheel if he had thought he was drunk.
In other developments, the coroner at the inquest called into question the decency of Fayed's father Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of the upmarket Harrods department store in London.
Rees reiterated that he had no memory of the crash but also denied being part of a plot to kill Diana.
A French police probe found that Paul had more than three times the French legal limit of alcohol in his blood on the night of August 31, 1997. French and British investigators have concluded that the crash was a tragic accident.
Rees -- formerly known as Rees-Jones -- was Fayed's bodyguard and the only person wearing a seatbelt in the car when it hit a pillar in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel, with Paul driving.
Cash-till receipts from the night indicate that Paul had ordered a Ricard, an aniseed-type spirit that goes cloudy when water is added. But Rees said he did not realise the driver was drinking alcohol.
"I didn't pay attention to what he was drinking, I didn't think that they were alcoholic drinks at the time," he told the inquest into Diana's death, at London's High Court.
"He was perfectly normal. I didn't sense that he was on edge, he was just as I knew him," Rees said in a statement to police read out at the hearing.
Rees said he did not see Paul drinking alcohol at any point during the evening. Asked whether, if he had seen him doing so "you would have ensured one way or another, that he wouldn't drive the car", he replied: "That's correct."
Fayed and Paul were killed instantly in the crash, while Diana died from internal injuries a few hours later. Rees suffered severe facial injuries and memory loss in the crash.
Al Fayed claims they were killed in a British establishment conspiracy to prevent Diana -- former wife of Prince Charles, and mother of Prince William and Prince Harry -- from marrying a Muslim.
But Rees said he knew nothing of any such plot. "I am not part of a conspiracy to suppress the truth at all," he said in a soft voice. "All I have ever done is given the truth as I see it."
He also said he had concerns about a "decoy plan" which preceded the final drive.
Under the plan, which he said was insisted upon by Fayed, Diana and her boyfriend were taken out of the back of the Ritz hotel in central Paris so as to avoid press photographers at the front entrance.
Rees said he had advised Fayed "that we could leave from the front in two vehicles as the crowd and the press had been pushed back," adding: "The decision to leave with no security would have been Dodi's."
Coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker questioned Al Fayed's decency, after the tycoon claimed in 2006 that Rees had lied about losing his memory and had been given a good United Nations security job in compensation.
Al Fayed's lawyer Michael Mansfield admitted he had no evidence to support the claim, to which the coroner replied: "Why haven't they been withdrawn by Mr Al Fayed since the 9th of February 2006?"
"They are very grave allegations and I would have thought that a man with any decency, who is not going to pursue them, would have withdrawn them."
