Inquest: Di's calls monitored?
2007-11-21 22:27
London - Princess Diana feared her phone calls were being monitored, her former private secretary told an inquest investigating her death on Wednesday.
Michael Gibbins, who worked for Diana for just over a year
before her death in a Paris car crash in 1997, said he had
detected disapproval by royal officials of the relationships she
had.
Giving carefully worded testimony to the court probing the
death of Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed, Gibbins also said
some of the causes she espoused like the anti-landmine campaign
had caused concern.
Acted on orders of Prince Philip
British and French police investigations have concluded that
Diana and Dodi died because their chauffeur, Henri Paul, was
drunk and drove too fast through a Paris road tunnel where the car crashed into a pillar.
Dodi's father, Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed, says Diana
and his son were killed by British security services acting on
the orders of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband and
Diana's former father-in-law.
Michael Mansfield, the lawyer acting for Dodi's father,
asked Gibbins: "Did the Princess, or for that matter anyone else, ever communicate to you that one of her concerns was that her phone calls and other communications were being monitored?"
He replied: "She never expressed that concern, but her
actions were such, in terms of changing telephone numbers, that
it was clear that that was a concern to her, yes.
"I was never directly asked to report on her movements and
certainly never did so," the former accountant told the court.
Gibbins described the atmosphere of shock and grief
pervading Kensington Palace, Diana's London residence after her
sudden and violent death on August 31 1997.
Burrell insisted on going to Paris
"Everyone was very upset indeed," he said. "The telephones
were constantly ringing from all sorts of places."
Gibbins said Diana's butler Paul Burrell was "very
distressed and distraught so he was not entirely coherent." But
Burrell insisted on going to Paris to help bring Diana's body
back home.
Gibbins agreed that there was disapproval both in the press
and from the royal household of Diana's relationships with men.
Among those listed by Mansfield were army officer James Hewitt.