A confidante of the late Mohamed Al Fayed, the Egyptian businessman whose son Dodi died with Princess Diana in 1997, has said that Al Fayed blamed himself for his son’s death in the immediate aftermath of the crash.
Andrew Neil, a well-known British journalist and former editor of the London Sunday Times, also said he was warned by the photographer Terry O’Neill: “Never get in the back of a car with [Dodi]. He does nothing but shout at the driver to go faster. It’s scary.”
Neil had worked for Fayed when the billionaire was seeking to establish a toe hold in British publishing, and remained friendly with the mercurial Harrods owner afterwards.
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Neil writes in the Daily Mail that shortly after the fatal accident, he went to see Fayed, who would later blame an establishment plot headed by Prince Philip for the accident, alleging that the royals knew Diana was pregnant by Dodi and could not countenance the mother of the future king, William, marrying a Muslim.
Neil said: “He was weighed down by grief, a lost soul. There was no word then of the ludicrous conspiracy theories he was soon to espouse. Instead, he told me something that I’ve never forgotten.
“He recounted how Dodi had come up with the cockamamie plan to shake off the paparazzi by escaping via the back entrance of the Ritz hotel [which Fayed owned], where he and Diana were ensconced in the Imperial Suite.”
Ritz security staff initially refused to carry out Dodi’s wishes without Mohammed’s authorisation, so Dodi called his father to try and persuade him to agree.
Mohamed had misgivings and told Dodi he should “just relax with Diana at the Ritz.”
Dodi however, persisted, saying he and Diana wanted to get away from the paparazzi who were swarming the hotel and spend the night at Dodi’s flat on the Champs-Élysées.
Neil writes: “Mohammed caved in to his son. He looked at me with a tear in his eye as he recounted this story and said: ‘I will never forgive myself for going along with Dodi’s plan. He would still be alive but for me.’”
Neil says this conversation confirms that Diana’s death was a tragic accident, as police reports and inquiries have subsequently found.
He says: “By Al Fayed’s own testimony to me, nobody could have been lying in wait to assassinate them since nobody knew in advance what they were going to do or how they were going to do it.”
