Opinion – Diana, 20 years later: the reason why you think she was murdered

No matter what the police investigations stated, many people still think she was murdered. Do you?

20 years ago, on the 31th of August 1997, at 4 am, Princess Diana died at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris.

The tragic death of the Princess of people’s hearts still continues to grab the headlines no matter what the two different investigations by French police – 1997/1999 – and Scotland Yard – the Operation Piaget 2004/2006 – had stated in their conclusions: the car crash that killed Diana, her fiancé Dodi Al Fayed and the driver Henry Paul was caused by the driver himself, in a fatal combination of alcohol and drugs during a crazy run at high speed to get away from paparazzi.

According to both the investigations, princess Diana wasn’t pregnant and on that road tunnel, few metres away from the Ritz Hotel that the couple had left in secret to avoid photographers, there was no Secret Agent “N” from the MI6, no manumission of the brakes, no Fiat Uno driven by an agent pointing a laser to disorientate the driver, as suggested by Mohamed Al-Fayed, Dodi’s father, who blame the Prince Philipp of Edinburgh, husband of the Queen Elizabeth II, for commissioning the murder.

Nevertheless, even if all these hypotheses couldn’t find their place in a Court, they have found it in the public opinion and Christopher Berry, an English author focused on conspiracy theories who is writing a novel based on Diana’s death, tried to explain why:

“I believe that a murder could have been possible. There are a lot of unanswered questions: the blood results from Henri Paul are still very hazy, the lack of any camera footage is also troubling and for me, the biggest hole in the evidence is the mysterious Fiat Uno, that clashed with Diana’s Mercedes and then disappeared”.

“Although I found plenty of evidence of negligence and cover-up of bungled actions by the authorities, none of it supported the idea she was murdered”, explained instead Gerald Posner, an American journalist who investigate the case and published his story on Talk Magazine in 1999, after interviewing Mr. Al-Fayed in person.

Mr Posner and Mr. Berry all agree on one point: many people want to believe that there was something more significant behind the death than merely a twist of fate. If there was a conspiracy to kill Diana because she was about to marry a Muslim, or was pregnant, it gives some meaning to her death. It means she did not die in vain just as a result of the misfortune of being in a terrible car wreck.