LONDON, Dec 10: A long-awaited British police report dealing with Princess Diana’s death which is due this week could finally lay to rest conspiracy theories that she was murdered.

More than nine years after Diana and her boyfriend Dodi al Fayed were killed in a car smash in Paris, a three-year inquiry headed by Britain’s former top police officer Sir John Stevens is expected to announce on Thursday that it has ruled out foul play.

However, that is unlikely to quash theories that British spies or even her ex-husband, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, had plotted the accident because the couple’s relationship was embarrassing the royal household. The top-level police investigation was ordered by former Royal Coroner Michael Burgess in January 2004 when he opened a British inquest into Diana’s death.

“I am aware that there is speculation that (her death was) not the result of a sad but relatively straightforward road traffic accident in Paris,” Burgess said at the time. Stevens, who headed London's police force, has spent almost three years investigating what happened, interviewing Charles for several hours as part of his inquiry which he said aims to draw a line under the issue.—Reuters