Princess Diana’s death: Police assessing new information

British police is assessing new information it has recently received about the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed in 1997.

Scotland Yard said it was “scoping” the information and “assessing its relevance and credibility”.

The Metropolitan Police said it was “not a re-investigation” into the deaths of the couple in a Paris car crash on 31 August 1997.

An inquest in 2008 found they had been unlawfully killed, partly due to the “gross negligence” of their driver.

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said the assessment would be carried out by officers from the specialist crime and operations command.

It added that the deaths had been “thoroughly investigated and examined” by the inquest held at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

A Met Police spokesman said that the force would “not discuss the source of the information” it was assessing.

A royal spokeswoman also said there would be no comment on the matter from Prince William or Prince Harry, or from Clarence House.

Scotland Yard said its assessment did not come under Operation Paget – the police investigation into allegations that Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed, her boyfriend, were murdered.

It was a theory endorsed at the time by Dodi Al Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, the then owner of London store Harrods.

But in December 2006, the report into Operation Paget said it had found no evidence of murder and dismissed all conspiracy theories surrounding the deaths.

Operation Paget concluded, just like the French investigation in 1999, that driver Henri Paul had been drunk and driving at excessive speed.

Responding to reports of the new information, a spokesman for Mohamed Al Fayed said he would be “interested in seeing the outcome” and trusted the Met would investigate “with vigor”.

Princess Diana was 36 when she died alongside Dodi Al-Fayed, 42.

Henri Paul was driving when their hired Mercedes crashed into a pillar in Paris’s Pont de l’Alma tunnel.

The crash happened after the couple had left the Ritz Hotel and were pursued by paparazzi on motorbikes. Dodi Al-Fayed’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was the only survivor.

At the inquest into their deaths, the jury found the couple had been unlawfully killed and the deaths were the result of “gross negligence” on the part of Henri Paul and the paparazzi.

The paparazzi pursuit, Henri Paul’s drink-driving and a lack of seatbelts contributed to the deaths, the jury said.

The inquest lasted more than three months and heard from 250 witnesses.

After the hearing it was announced that its cost had reached £4.5 million ($7 million), with a further £8 million ($12.5 million) spent on the Metropolitan Police investigation.

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