UK intelligence denies killing Princess Diana

LONDON—The former head of MI6 denied Wednesday that the British intelligence agency was responsible for the car accident that killed Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi al Fayed, in 1997.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who was the director of special operations for the agency at the time of Diana’s Paris accident, testified at the inquest into the pair’s death that he also believes an operation by rogue agents would have been impossible.
Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has accused MI6 of engineering the death of his son and the princess at the behest of Prince Philip, the queen’s husband. During his time as director of special operations, Dearlove said it was his responsibility to sign off on any operation that would otherwise be illegal, such as breaking into an office or receiving a stolen document.
The operation would then have to be approved by the foreign secretary, a senior member of the government. Ian Burnett, a lawyer for the coroner’s inquest, asked Dearlove whether he could confirm that “no authorization was sought in respect of any activities concerning Princess Diana.” “I can absolutely confirm that,” Dearlove said.
Burnett asked: “And it would plainly have been outside the functions of the (the agency) to do so?” “Had it been done, it would have been outside the function of the service,” Dearlove said. Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999-2004, said he did not authorize any slayings. Burnett asked if it was possible for rogue elements to mount an operation outside the chain of command. “I would have regarded that as an impossibility,” Dearlove said.
Britain’s former spy chief on Wednesday took the rare step of going public to deny that the security services murdered Princess Diana. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) normally neither confirms nor denies stories about its operations in the shadowy world of espionage glamorized in the James Bond movies.
But former MI6 boss Richard Dearlove decided to speak out over the deaths of Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed in a high-speed Paris car crash in 1997. Dodi’s father, luxury storeowner Mohamed al-Fayed, says that his son and Diana were killed by British security services on the orders of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband and Diana’s former father-in-law.
Fayed has said her killing was ordered because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king having a child with his son, and that Diana’s body was embalmed to cover up evidence she was expecting a baby. That produced a forceful denial from Dearlove at the inquest into the deaths of Diana and Dodi, where al-Fayed has made a string of allegations against British Establishment figures. Lawyer Ian Burnett asked Dearlove: “During the whole of your time in SIS, from 1966 to 2004, were you ever aware of the service assassinating anyone?”
“No, I was not,” he told the court, rebutting what he called a “very personal allegation” over Diana’s death. Burnett, putting a string of al-Fayed’s allegations to Dearlove, said: “It is suggested that Prince Philip and the intelligence agencies really run this country and that we are not a parliamentary democracy.”
“I do not want to be flippant,” Dearlove said. “I’m tempted to say I’m flattered, but this is such an absurd allegation that it is difficult to deal with ... It’s completely off the map.” Dearlove dismissed as “utterly ridiculous” claims that Philip and his son Prince Charles, Diana’s former husband and heir to the throne, were members of MI6, Britain’s overseas spy agency.
He said MI6 needed the authorization from Britain’s Foreign Minister to carry out any operation which broke the law. Asked to confirm that no authorization was sought over Princess Diana, he said: “I can absolutely confirm that.” Next week three secret service officers are scheduled to appear at the inquest but their identities will not be revealed.—Agencies