At the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed, Britain’s royals were branded the ”Dracula family” and a former spy chief was made to sweat in the witness box, pledging that assassinations were not part of the ethos of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
This week’s highly acrimonious, and public, exchanges in a courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice doubtlessly have great entertainment value. But some fear that the inquest has degenerated into a farce as it threatens to become the stage for a proxy fight between the British establishment and its critics and adversaries.
”This is not only a farce, it is a contemptible abuse of British law and a scandalous waste of public money,” Denis MacShane, a prominent Labour politician, said about the inquest, which has cost £6-million since it was launched in October.
His view was backed on Thursday by senior members of the government’s intelligence and security committee, who urged an end to the inquest after it had been ”turned into a circus” by Mohammed al-Fayed, the Egyptian multimillionaire Harrods owner and father of Dodi.
Al-Fayed, who has always maintained that Diana and his son were murdered in a secret-service plot masterminded by Prince Philip and Prince Charles, Diana’s former husband, lambasted Philip as a ”Nazi” and the royals as ”Dracula” family at the inquest this week, claiming that there was a cover-up going on.
In al-Fayed’s view, the media, French police, ambulance and hospital workers in Paris and many more are all part of the conspiracy, and most witnesses at the inquest are assisting a cover-up.
”I’m not talking to you, you idiot, you are part of the establishment,” the 75-year-old Egyptian businessman shouted at a BBC correspondent asking a question outside the court.
In turn, al-Fayed has heard his son and heir described as an ”oily bedhopper” by Prince Philip, and endured the contempt of the so-called establishment for decades, going back to the Egyptian’s defeat of Roland (Tiny) Rowland in the 1980s takeover battle for Harrods, the luxury department store.
It is possible, however, that not only the farcical element of the inquest and its costs, but also the feeling that too much is being exposed is behind the calls that ”enough is enough”.
After al-Fayed’s ”day in court” on Monday it was, after all, an extraordinary spectacle to see a former spy chief breaking into a sweat over being forced to deny that his agents killed Diana and Dodi.
”We aren’t in the assassination trade,” declared the aptly named Richard Dearlove, who led Britain’s MI6 overseas intelligence service at the time of Dodi’s and Diana’s death in a Paris car crash in August 1997.
In fact, during his 38 years of service, he had not been aware of the ”MI6 assassinating anyone”.
The extraordinary fact that Dearlove, a real-life boss of James Bond, became the first-ever intelligence chief to have to defend his service in public was due entirely to the efforts of al-Fayed’s lawyers.
And they used their chance. Michael Mansfield, QC, one of the country’s most prominent defence lawyers, put to Dearlove the entire spectrum of alleged past plots, revealed by renegade former agents such as David Shayler and Richard Tomlinson.
Dearlove, asked whether Diana’s political activities against landmines could have ”exposed the role of British companies and mercenaries selling landmines for use in the Angolan civil war”, replied: ”There is only one word: ridiculous.”
”Frankly, we did not take any interest in what she [Diana] was doing. It’s not a national security issue,” said Dearlove, who added that he considered the allegations made against MI6 as ”personal and deeply offensive”.
Dearlove was asked whether ”rogue elements” in his service could in the past have been behind plans to murder Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi and Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, as claimed by renegade agents.
The allegations concerning Gadaffi were ”simply not true”, and the Balkan plan — which, according to Dearlove, did not involve Milosevic — was ”killed stone dead by the officer’s line manager because it was so out of touch with service practice and ethos”.
Dearlove, visibly uncomfortable under cross-examination, told Manfield that he found his ”line of questioning rather tedious”.
However, his high-profile performance this week does not end the exposure of the secret services to the rigours of a democratic legal system.
Next week, up to 10 — still serving — agents will be called to the inquest, referred to only by letters and numbers, and shielded from the view of reporters.
The head of the inquest, top Judge Scott Baker, defended his way of handling the inquiry against growing criticism. Allowing the inquest ”more latitude than is usually the case” is the best way to deal with the ”public suspicions” surrounding the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed, he said.
At the end of the inquest, expected in April, the all-important question will be what the 11 jurors — chosen from the ranks of the general public — will make of the bewildering array of issues presented to them. — Sapa-dpa