October 21, 2003	Tuesday	Sha'aban 24, 1424

LONDON, Oct 20: Months before she lost her life in a road crash, Britain’s Princess Diana claimed in a letter there was a plot to kill her in a car “accident”, according to a report on Monday which reignited conspiracy theories surrounding her death.

Diana reportedly wrote to her butler and confidant Paul Burrell, 10 months before she was killed in a car crash in a Paris underpass on August 31, 1997, that someone “is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry” again.

Diana also said in her letter that her husband and heir to the throne Prince Charles had put her “through such hell” during their marriage.

The Daily Mirror tabloid splashed what it said were extracts of the letter across its pages on Monday. They are also to be published in Burrell’s book, “A Royal Duty”, which the newspaper is serialising ahead of its launch next week.

Diana reportedly named the person she believed was plotting to kill her, but the newspaper said it was unable to repeat the allegation for legal reasons. Also killed in the smash were Diana’s lover Dodi Fayed and the driver of their limousine.

Dodi, 42, and Diana, 36, were in the back seat of their car — pursued by photographers on motorbikes — when it crashed. Only Diana’s bodyguard survived.

A French inquiry in 1999 concluded that the car crashed because the driver had been drinking and travelling too fast. But there has never been an inquest in Britain.

Burrell said he had released the letter in the hope that it would lead to an inquest and a “thorough investigation of the facts by the British authorities”.

The letter was certain to fuel conspiracy theorists who refuse to accept the official version of the circumstances surrounding Diana’s death.

Dodi’s father, the Egyptian-born tycoon Mohammed Al Fayed, has previously claimed that Britain’s establishment found the relationship between his son, a Muslim, and the princess unacceptable, and conspired with the intelligence services to have them killed.

The businessman said in a statement: “It is extraordinary that Paul Burrell did not volunteer this evidence in time for the French investigation into the crash but it is now vital that he be called to give evidence in an independent public inquiry.—AFP