Word: crashes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Princess Diana - and the press horde that will dog its every step until it wraps up its two-day Paris visit on Tuesday. Led by magistrate Scott Baker, the 11 British jurors were retracing the final movements by Diana and companion Dodi Al Fayed ahead of their fatal car crash in August 1997. The current investigation comes at the behest of Dodi's father, Mohammed Al Fayed, who insists his son and Diana were killed in a plot by the royal family and secret services to prevent the couple's impending marriage. Those charges have been rebuffed by an official...
Despite the surrounding hype, chances are neither the British inquiry nor their eyeballing of the Parisian venues Diana sped through before the crash will shed any new light on what happened that August night ten years ago. "We know what caused her death: it's been catalogued in minute detail by investigators in both countries," says one slightly disgusted French justice official when asked about this week's visit to Paris by the jurors. "Case closed - move on." He goes on: "The official logic is by giving them the visual framework and time-span they all fit into, [the jurors...
...jury heard and saw the first of pieces of evidence. Referred to by Baker as "uncontroversial," these are the facts that nobody is contesting: a basic chronology of events leading up to the crash; a video of a car retracing the route from the Ritz to the Pont de l'Alma tunnel; and security tape footage of Diana and Dodi at the hotel. There's more chronology to come on Thursday, then a visit to Paris to see the tunnel and the hotel early next week. After that, the inquest gets into the details, and things get more complicated...
...Henri Paul drunk? The accident theory relies on the jury believing that Henri Paul, the security guard who was driving the Mercedes the night of the crash, was under the influence of drink, drugs or both and lost control of the car. The murder theory depends on the jury agreeing that he was sober and that more sinister forces were responsible. On the one hand, blood tests performed on Paul's body put his blood alcohol level way over France's drink-driving limit. On the other, the same tests carried out on the same day by two different doctors...
...seemed to be picking apart Al Fayed's case, Baker made it clear that the murder allegations would be taken seriously, that the inquests would explore all the points - 10 of them in total - that Al Fayed's legal team say support their claim that the crash was no accident, and that Al Fayed (or his lawyer, at least) will have his day in court...