Al Fayed Receives Modest Payout In Princess Diana Case

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Oct 24th 2009 at 6:01PM

There's an intriguing update in the Princess Diana story. The AFP reports that a French court has ordered the authorities to pay Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods department store and the father of Dodi Fayed, 5,000 euros over an inquiry into the car crash that killed Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed and their driver Henri Paul in Paris. Since the accident in 1997, Mohamed Al Fayed has claimed that the accident, which was caused when Paul attempted to elude paparazzi photographers, was part of a murderous plot.

In 2007, Al Fayed brought a case against the French state after a judge dismissed a challenge to the original inquest ruling which stated that the crash had been caused by the fact that Henri Paul was driving drunk. Al Fayed claim that the case had been slowed down by mistakes made by the judge in charge. This week the court ruled that court authorities were responsible for the problems had delayed that case several years and so Al Fayed is owed 5,000 euros compensation plus 3,000 euros in legal fees. It's a drop in the bucket for the billionaire department store owner but Al Fayed has said that he is delighted because the verdict shows that there has been a cover-up.

Tags: dodi fayed, DodiFayed, henri paul, HenriPaul, mohamed al-fayed, MohamedAl-fayed, princess diana, PrincessDiana