FINAL HOURS: Princess Diana rides with boyfriend Dodi Fayed in an elevator at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, just before they embarked on a limo ride that ended in a tragic “accident” (top left) in a car tunnel in August 1997. (
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Scotland Yard yesterday said it’s looking into a shocking claim — made by relatives of a former soldier — that Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were murdered by British Special Forces operatives.
The probe matches up to allegations made in a new book, in which author Alan Power describes a palace-condoned plot to keep her from revealing damaging sexual details about Prince Charles.
“It was definitely not an accident, I can tell you that,” Power told The Post in an exclusive interview last night about the 1997 Paris car crash that stunned the world.
Scotland Yard is looking at a British Special Air Service soldier’s claim that the unit was involved in “arranging” the crash — and that this had been “covered up,” according to a report yesterday in The Telegraph newspaper of London.
Scotland Yard’s new information also includes references to something known as Diana’s diary, Sky News reported.
The assassination allegations arose during the trial of Sgt. Danny Nightingale, an SAS sniper convicted of illegal weapons possession, the paper reported.
They were made by the estranged parents-in-law of “Soldier N,” an unidentified SAS soldier who was a key witness in Nightingale’s prosecution.
“Soldier N’s” estranged wife’s parents spurred Scotland Yard to action by writing to the SAS’s commanding officer, claiming that he’d told his wife that the unit had “arranged” the princess’ death — and a resulting coverup.
This is precisely what Power concludes in “The Princess Diana Conspiracy,” which hits shelves Aug. 29, two days before the 16th anniversary of Diana’s death.
The “hit” on the tragic princess was hatched by “The Increment,” a top secret unit of the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, Power said he believes, based on his 10-year investigation into the British government’s own inquest evidence and his interviews with former SAS officers.
The Increment’s operatives — drawn from the SAS and the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Service — had someone ride ahead of Fayed’s and Diana’s Mercedes in a white Fiat, and to cause the car to careen into the tunnel’s cement sides and pillars by shining a strobe light into the chauffeur’s eyes, Power said.
“The attack on Diana in the tunnel mirrored almost exactly a plot described by ex-SAS/MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson that Witness A from the inquests had concocted, when they served together as MI6 agents. This plot was hatched to murder Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Serbia,” Power told The Post.
A British inquest possessed, but discounted, Tomlinson’s account of the never-enacted Milosevic plot, Power said.
Instead, the inquest would find in 2008 that the crash was caused by chauffeur Henri Paul’s intoxication.
Milosevic would die in jail in 2006, awaiting trial for war crimes.
“What they had decided to do [in the Milosevic plot] was use a strobe light to flash into the driver’s eyes as he drove into a tunnel in Geneva — and they mentioned the pillars specifically, as very important to ensure the probability of death,” Power said.
The approvals would have had to come from the crown itself.
“All I can say, and I do say in my book, is that the nod giving authority to commit the attack had to come from someone with considerable power,” he said.
“I don’t believe it was [then Prime Minister] Tony Blair. He’d only been in office for 14 weeks. I’m no fan of Tony Blair, but I don’t believe he was responsible for this.
“But he knew about it after the fact, he knew it was murder, and he kept it quiet to protect the monarchy and protect MI6,” Power said.
The palace must have approved, he added.
“The only authority that the MI6 would accept other than from the prime minister would be from the royal palace,” he said.
Asked how such an explosive secret could remain unrevealed for so long, Power said that this is what MI6, and The Increment in particular, is all about.
“This was under the direction of MI6, and their team called The Increment, who are comprised of SAS and SBS operatives, who are sworn to secrecy, and who have to swear that they are prepared to be ethically flexible before they can join the team,” he said.
Additional evidence points to a high-level hit plot, Power says.
For one, eyewitness statements were doctored to frame the paparazzi, he said.
The official eyewitness “accounts” had Diana’s car surrounded by paparazzi as it crashed.
Not so, Power said.
“The Mercedes was smashed against the wall with the horn blowing. And they got off the bike — photographer Romuald Rat and Stephane Darmon, who was the rider,” Power said.
“The assassins — in the white Fiat — had gone, and there were no other bikes there,” he said.
“The police would claim Darmon told them that there were many people milling around the crash. But they [Rat and Darmon] were the first there.
“That was part of the plot,” Power said. “Attack the car, get away, and have the paparazzi come just behind and give the impression that they were responsible.”
As for the Fiat, the official word is that it has never been found.
But it has, Power argues.
“It was found by Dodi’s father’s investigators a few months later. The taillight had been replaced and repaired from where it had been rear-ended by the Mercedes,” he said.
The original taillight, he said, was recovered smashed among the debris of the crash, he said.
The Fiat was owned by James Andanson, a paparazzo who has been investigated, inconclusively, for other murders, Power said.
“He was known to be very keen on Diana,” Power said. “He had followed her all over Saint- Tropez the prior summer.
“But 23 months later [after the crash], he was found shot dead with two bullet holes in his head” in Milau, Power said.
“He was in his car, and the car had been incinerated. His body itself had been cremated to almost total ash.
“They say he committed suicide, but the car keys were never found.”
Andanson would have had to shoot himself in the head while setting his own car on fire — not a likely story, Power points out.
“There was no flesh left,” he said. “It wasn’t possible for him to do this to himself.”
The firefighter who discovered Andanson’s body, Christof Palaf, offered to come to court and testify before the inquest, “but they didn’t want his evidence,” Power said.
Asked what the motive to murder Diana could have been, Power said there were several.
“The motive was the fact that she was about to marry Dodi Fayed, and she was also pregnant,” both embarrassments to the royal family, he said.
But more important was what she “had” on her former husband.
“She was intending to destroy Charles Windsor by releasing embarrassing information about his sexual peccadillos,” Power alleged. He plans to reveal those secrets in his book.
The author said he had no idea it would hit print just as Scotland Yard was probing identical allegations as he is raising himself.
Scotland Yard has declined to confirm the content or source behind their re-examination of the crash.