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Di: Top cop demands apology
14/02/2008 21:43 - (SA)
London - The former British police chief who conducted an inquiry into Princess Diana's death angrily denied on Thursday "scurrilous allegations" that he had not done his job properly.
"Allegations trip off people's tongues - it's just not right," John Stevens told the London inquest into the deaths of Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed, killed in a high-speed Paris car crash in August 1997.
"I am looking for an apology in relation to that," he told the court. "There were scurrilous allegations made."
His police probe concluded in December 2006 that Diana's death was a tragic accident and that she was not the victim of a murder plot, as has been alleged by Dodi's father, luxury storeowner Mohamed al-Fayed.
Al-Fayed alleges that his son and Diana were killed by British security services on the orders of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband and Diana's former father-in-law.
Harrods storeowner al-Fayed believes Philip ordered her killing because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king to have a child with his son.
He alleges that Diana's body was embalmed to cover up evidence she was expecting a baby.
Al-Fayed, who will appear before the inquest next Monday, has rejected the findings of the Stevens report as "garbage" and said: "There is a plan and plot against me."
'Quite outrageous'
The former police chief, clearly angered as he gave evidence to the inquest, referred to the "extraordinary accusation that I had been got at in terms of what the evidence was, in terms of how the report was going to be put forward".
"It's quite outrageous," Stevens said, after heated exchanges with lawyers.
"That is what I find so hurtful, that I could manipulate them (the detectives on his inquiry team) into saying things and going down a criminal course of action."
Under British law, an inquest is needed to determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.
The Diana inquest had to be delayed until French and British police probes into the crash were completed.
- Reuters
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