LONDON: The car crash which killed Princess Diana would not have happened if she had not ditched her police protection team several years previously, Britain s former top policeman told her inquest Thursday.
Lord Paul Condon, the head of London s Metropolitan Police when she died in August 1997, said he begged Diana to keep a team of officers with her, telling her in 1993 that he was really concerned about her security.
Let me be absolutely frank, he told the High Court in London on his first day of evidence.
If as my wish, she would have had police protection in Paris, then I m absolutely convinced those three lives would not have been tragically lost.
Her problem with protection was, sadly, that she did not have police protection. I wish she had.
Under questioning by Michael Mansfield – lawyer for Mohamed El-Fayed, whose son Dodi was dating Diana and also died in the Paris smash – Condon also accepted that the princess did not trust the police.
Clearly she had decided in her own mind, sadly, that the police, if they were on anyone s side, were not on her side, the former police chief said.
That was wrong but I think it was a view that I think I would have found it very hard to change her mind about.
El-Fayed claims that the couple, who died along with chauffeur Henri Paul after leaving the Ritz Hotel in Paris, were killed in an establishment plot because they were about to announce their engagement.
Diana and Britain s heir to the throne Prince Charles were divorced in 1996. -AFP
