Jury rejects conspiracy theories about Lady Diana

This report gives some deeper information into the conspiracy theories spouted by Mohamed al-Fayed, from Egypt, which he developed immediately on hearing that the two had died and which, the report said, changed only in scale: by the end of the inquest, he had accused the Duke of Edinburgh (the Queen's husband, Prince Phillip), Prince Charles, Tony Blair, Paul Condon and John Stevens, both former commissioners of the London Metropolitan Police, the Queen's former private secretary Lord Fellowes, the former British ambassador to Paris, Lord Jay, Diana's elder sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale, the bodyguard Trevor Rees, who was injured in the crash, who was employed by the Fayeds, and the British, French and American intelligence services and French health and emergency services and judiciary of being in on the conspiracy.

None of this is surprising to me; conspiracy theories find a ready audience in many parts of the Muslim world, and this particular theory started doing the rounds very shortly after the accident, something I noticed on the then-popular Usenet Muslim forums (that was before web forums became popular); when I suggested that she was simply killed in a car crash caused by drunken driving, someone asked "are you living in an I-love-Di world, therefore she just died?". The truth is that I never had any great affection for Lady Di or for any of the rest of the royal family, although I admire some of the work of Prince Charles. I did not believe in the conspiracy theories simply because nobody really presented any evidence; they just produced a possible motive, namely that the establishment would not have wanted the future King of England (actually, of the UK) to have a Muslim half-brother.

That's a plausible motive, if they bothered to back it up with evidence, but they do not. Motives are a lead in any enquiry, but not a proof. Now, I take a moderate position when it comes to conspiracy theories, meaning I don't reject them out of hand when there is at least some evidence, but here, nobody ever really produced any. All they have ever had was motives, and all the assertions put forward to back up the assassination theory, such as the fact that the ambulance crew did not simply rush the pair to hospital, were easily answered (in that case, it was because in France, more care is given at the scene, while in the UK the emphasis is put on getting them to hospital), I have always believed that if the British establishment wanted to get rid of anyone, it would have been Charles, because he is widely perceived as being too outspoken on matters political than is normal for a royal. For obvious historical reasons, this is worrying to many people.

What is also worrying is that the death of the sons (and daughters) of rich men in a car crash in a foreign country with a judicial system as developed as the UK's can be the focus of a multi-million-pound public inquiry. Admittedly, some good will come out of it, in that many of those who have made a name for themselves on the back of their connections with Diana and helped to foment this suspicion, along with the low-rent newspapers who did the same, have been discredited, but many of those who believed the theories will doubtless compare the inquest to the Hutton inquiry, which was structured entirely differently (without a jury, for starters), and dismiss it out of hand. Some of us never needed convincing; others never will be convinced. I wonder if those who fomented the suspicion over Diana's death, most obviously Mohamed al-Fayed himself, will be made to pay for the expense they have caused the British taxpayers, or if it's all in the service our country gives to obsessive rich men?