Talk:Conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales

CCTV images re Channel 5 documentary
The investigating police officer from Operation Paget simply said that all the CCTV cameras being switched off was simply "not true" - he didn't elaborate though. The article currently sounds like there was something more substantive about it in the named Channel 5 documentary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.99.210.174 (talk) 10:45, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Missing Info?
On the page Tiggy Legge-Bourke I found these two quotes:

In December 2007, witnesses at the inquest were questioned about a letter to Paul Burrell which Diana had written by hand in October 1993, of which only redacted versions had previously been public. In this letter, Diana said:

''This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous - my husband is planning "an accident" in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy. Camilla is nothing but a decoy, so we are all being used by the man in every sense of the word.''

In what is called 'the Mishcon note', which dates from 1995, Diana forecast that in 1996 the Queen would abdicate, the Prince of Wales would discard Parker-Bowles in favour of Legge-Bourke, and that she would herself die in a planned road crash.[42] Mishcon copied the note to the Metropolitan Police before he died, and they took no action on it.[42]

So I came to this article to find more info on these letters but couldn't find anything. It seems like a rather important fact.24.190.34.219 (talk) 07:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Another theory is that Dodi was going to convert to Christianity and his father had him killed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.107.50.158 (talk) 04:57, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Bias?
It seems to me that this article is clearly biased in favor of the conclusion that it was not a conspiracy. I am *quite* certain that there are many people who would be able to add to this article by providing evidence in favor of it being a conspiracy. One thing that comes to mind right off the bat, is that it was reported soon after the crash by cnn that the CIA had literally 10,000 pages worth of paperwork from "following Diana and Dodi around." When asked, the CIA did NOT deny that this paperwork existed. There also was at least one automotive engineer who analyzed the crash and said that EVEN WITH her seat belt off, Diana should have survived (because the alleged forces were distributed in such a way that they would not injure somebody in that position in the cab of the car as badly as might seem to be the case, on first blush; and because the car spun around in a circle rather than simply coming to an abrupt halt). In my opinion there are still many legitimate questions all these years later - Three things were clearly present, means, motive and opportunity. And considering the possibilities that were beginning to unfold to the oh-so-Holy line of succession to the Christian British Throne, in my opinion motive was present in *spades*. Frankly, some people are wondering what the heck TOOK them so long. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.127.200.152 (talk) 01:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Read the account of the inquest. All this silly rubbish was utterly exposed as lacking a grain of credibility; not least the absurd idea that MI6 is an assassination squad acting on the orders of the Royal Family. My problem with the article is the reverse - why is there only one reference to the inquest which put most of these ideas to bed? The answer I suspect is that the editors who created the article have moved on to some other nonsense. --John Price (talk) 15:59, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Calling facts "silly rubbish" does not change the facts. Annoyed with fanboys (talk) 01:54, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The posting above is not factual - it consists of unsourced, unverified hearsay and worthless opinions. Al Fayed got his day in court at the inquest and could not produce a single fact to back up the accusations he had been so ready to offer. Consider the number of person he included in the supposed conspiracy - as counsel at the inquest put to him - "So that's MI5, MI6, the CIA, the DGSE - the French intelligence service - Judge Stephan ... the French ambulance service ... Lord Condon, Lord Stevens ... Mr Burgess, the Surrey coroner and Lady Sarah McCorquodale?" . Al Fayed closed his testimony by begging the judge to find the (non-existent) evidence he didn't have. He could not face the obvious fact that the conspiracy theories never held a grain of credibility for anyone who was capable of assessing evidence and that if anything was to blame for the deaths, it was the failings of his own organisation. --John Price (talk) 08:15, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

The article is very biased. Reread the embalming section. The article states several reasons why the French had to embalm so quickly. But in the end they did not follow protocol for whatever reason. The following line should be deleted. "This meant there was very little time to prepare the body for viewing and it was clearly unacceptable to present Diana's body to her family and the President of France in its then state.". What a load of BS. It gives rise to several questions, like Who's decision was it that "the Body had to prepared for viewing." The protocol was clearly not followed buy why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.123.52.248 (talk) 01:26, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

This is a gravely biased article. It should be removed on quality grounds or something. Just one example -- the Bright Flash section asserts there is only one witness and spends several lines debunking that witness, but then concludes 'oh, by the way, there was another witness'. Trash. 70.48.192.144 (talk) 18:51, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

"She actually time travelled through the tunnel and run over Winston Churchill in 1942. It is true look it up on wikipedia."
Please explain, what and where? "She actually time travelled through the tunnel and run over Winston Churchill in 1942. It is true look it up on wikipedia". --Darthmortar (talk) 11:04, 24 February 2010 (UTC)


 * These are the things that sneak in to wiki now and then. I have read the following of Ban Ki Moon: "His parents were poofters, and he is an awful human being". I still remember this article about Libya: "Libya is a nice country to visit you chicken brain! If you cant get to Libya, you must be Egyptian. You are then barred from entering Libya, and that is for....." (end quote). This was not Uncyclopedia, but I can not excuse myself from having enough humour to find these things funny.....it just happens. --82.134.28.194 (talk) 08:30, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that what he is trying to say is "don't trust everything you read on Wikipedia" and he would be correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.151.26.247 (talk) 22:16, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Objection! Rhain1999 (talk) 02:17, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Fayed's Motives
I think it is worth pointing out Fayed's chief motive in trying to promote the conspiracy theory. The Princess was killed in one of his cars, driven by one of his chauffeurs, so presumably he could still be held legally accountable. 86.145.156.23 (talk) 15:48, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Good point, but there are a few reasons for that I do not see it that way. I see Tony Blair as the actual winner of this incident. In early 1997, he would promise many things. Some might say that Blair turned out to be soft on the foxhunting issue, I would say he earned immunity towards his promises. I am not saying he orchestrated anything, as there was no conspiracy. As for Al-Fayed, I believe we can't overestimate his inteligence. Bending the law, and lying about your background does not really earn a jail-sentence. It still does not mean that you can initiate decades with moralisations.

It may seem like favoritism if he would care more for the safety and well being of his close relatives than of....no he did not. If all the passangers had died instantaneously, there would be no stress on the ressources, belonging to the medical teams that happened to be responsible for keeping two of them alive. It may just be as such where perillous driving has nothing to do with it, as this would be the Parisian way of driving. That may just be a reason why no lawsuits have run in from the residents of Paris to the Ritz. --Stat-ist-ikk (talk) 13:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * You may have heard the fairly recent revelations that the other chauffeurs hated to drive that car. It had been written off twice and had been totally rebuilt. Valetude (talk) 01:15, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Recent claims about the car being rebuilt appear to have originated with photographer Pascal Rostain, who wrote a book called “Who Killed Lady Di?”, and advertising exectuive Eric Bousquet, who claims to have owned the car in 1994. However, neither of them explain why none of this came up during the police investigation, or why Etoile Limousines would want or need to provide a car that had been totaled and was unsafe to drive. I can't find any balanced articles on the subject, just tabloid regurgitation. The official investigation concluded: "Both the French and British examinations of the Mercedes have shown that there were no mechanical issues with the car that could have in any way caused or contributed to the crash." 2A00:23C7:9992:E701:C172:674F:578:4FEA (talk) 02:19, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Article title
Is it me or does the title "Death of Diana, Princess of Wales conspiracy theories" sound a little strange? Due to the way the name is given I'm inclined to think it would be better titled as "Conspiracy theories about/surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales", but I know it wouldn't be consistent with the other articles about conspiracy theories. Anyone else get this? — MK (t/c) 20:14, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Succession Issue
It is inacurrate in the extreme to inlcude succession to the throne as the motive behind any conspiracy theory. Diana could have had had as many children as she wanted, with whomever, and they would not have affected the current line of succession. Diana was not royal in her own right. She had a minor claim to the throne as a Spencer (if I remmeber correctly, via Charles I), but there were several hundred other legitmate claimants before her. Any child she may have had would have been half sibling to the Princes William and Harry, but that's it. The status of royalty and any direct claim to the throne would have to come through Charles' paternity. As regards a mulsim claiming the throne, that is also impossible. The acts of parliament governing succession require that any sovereign be a member of the Anglican Church, this automatically (and at least in one case, deliberately) excludes Catholics, Jews, Muslims and any other religion you care to mention. I do not wish to get into the rights or wrongs of this, but it is currently the law. There are several Catholics in the current royal family who have been removed from the line of succession - no exception has been made for them, I do not see anybody making an exception for anyone else. Being half brother/sister to the King of the UK and heir to the Al Fayed fortune would have made for an easy, priviliged and possibly high-profile life, but would not have altered the line of succession even slightly. 85.72.36.254 (talk) 11:51, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Henri Paul's mission?
If Henri Paul was under orders to murder the Princess, then presumably he was expected to commit suicide in the same incident. Valetude (talk) 16:49, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Copies
The Mail and the Express are waving around plots. The Telegraph is very cynical of them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.173.221 (talk) 15:09, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Recent edits
If anyone has issues with my edits, please discuss it with me here. -A1candidate (talk) 00:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * As editors we are bound by WP:FRINGE, this article is not the forum to try to demonstrate that the conspiracy theories are true. There are other places to reheat the conspiracies. Any material suggesting a conspiracy cannot be taken as the equal with facts which demonstrate that they fail to be credible. NPOV does not apply in the case of articles such as this. The claims, for example about Henri Paul being in the pay of the security services, have been legally found wanting. The Princess of Wales was not being monitored in Paris by the British security forces. Credible sources say they did not know she was in the French capital. The vast number of pages about the Princess of Wales supposedly generated by the Americans has also been demonstrated to be a false assertion. It goes on and on.


 * What Muammar al-Gaddafi's 'Human Rights Commission' thought about the cause of death of the Princess of Wales is not particularly notable, even as a putative conspiracy claim. The Associated Press wire (reproduced here from a local newspaper in Eugene, Oregon) and a Washington Post piece, both from September 1997, appear to be the main sources for the Libya theory. As these specific claims do not seem to have gained any traction in the last 16 years, I would suggest the image and caption should be deleted. Along with the rest of what has been added. Philip Cross (talk) 01:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

If I wanted to treat these claims as facts, I would have went directly to the actual article at Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and not here. The assertion that Mr Paul was paid by intelligence agencies originated from the official inquiry itself, so I doubt the investigators would have come to such a conclusion if they had not seen the evidence. In any case, could you show me how this theory has been debunked by an independent person or entity? Could you show me how the Washington Post's report about the NSA keeping a file on the Princess has been proven to be false?

The fact is that thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know that the intelligence agencies of the British, French and Americans all work together to spy on entire populations. Heck, the French even provided secret information to MI6 during the Falklands War. In this respect, Libya's claim that the French and the British were both involved does not seem too far fetched to me.

How do I know this? Because Gaddafi has maintained close links with the spy agencies of not just America but also Britain and Canada.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg... -A1candidate (talk) 02:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I would check the sources about Henri Paul cited in this article from the inquiry, which don't suggest anything suspicious. You are getting into original research territory in your comments. As I say above, the point of the article is not to prove the existence of a conspiracy, which you seem to be suggesting. Using various strings including "Snowden" on Google does not result in anything substantial. OK, it looks as though I was wrong about the NSA not having documents about the Princess of Wales, but in practice in changes nothing.


 * The Washington Post story from December 1998, when Snowden would still have been at school, draws on reports about the Princess of Wales' death in the Mirror, a British tabloid which is not a reliable source. You have cited that paper directly which is clearly inadmissible. The report does not say what the 1,000 pages are about, apart from speculating about sensationalist titbits: "America's spy chiefs admitted last night they snooped on Princess Diana for years -- and learned some of her most intimate love secrets." The basis for suggesting a putative conspiracy, as you are attempting to do, is absent.


 * This later piece from the London Observer in 2004 speculates about the documents containing clues about her death. From an NSA statement: "The National Security Agency does not target British citizens, and any information that NSA holds that references Princess Diana is purely incidental to its collection". It contradicts what you have added, which implies deliberate surveillance, and The Observer is a reliable source. The report only has Fayed attempting to derive a conspiracy theory from the unreleased documents. Fayed's activities in this area have plenty of coverage in this article, and at the inquest he could not come up with any documentary evidence suggesting a conspiracy. Check the reports on his appearance at the inquest cited here and in his Wikipedia article if you don't believe me. (See, for example, the current reference 32.) So the NSA documents do not look notable as far as the requirements of this article are concerned. They are a cul-de-sac.


 * You also have not demonstrated why a handful of 16 year old sources citing a Libyan governmental body are at all notable as suggesting a conspiracy between governments purportedly involved in her death, apart from a spot of original research. Philip Cross (talk) 10:55, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The inter-cooperation between intelligence agencies is not a conspiracy theory - it's a proven fact. Snowden's contribution to our understanding of the world lies in how his disclosures have showed that the intelligence agencies of the British, French, German, American, and many other governments secretly cooperate with each other to spy on each others' citizens. The artlce currently says:

It is entirely possible that all of them are involved. That sentence, therefore, needs to be changed. The way forward would be to identify the security services (intelligence agency) of countries involved.

I would like to point out that original research only applies to statements for which there are no published sources to back them up. As far as my edits are concerned, this does not seem to be the case.

A source does not need to be notable to be included, but it has to be reliable. The point Im making here is that neutrality is a key policy that applies for all articles, whether there is a conspiracy or not.

There is a lot of weight given to the claims of government officials from Britain and the U.S. Thanks to Snowden and other courageous men and women, however, we do know that Western governments routinely lie to their citizens on a regular basis.

If this article is to be a neutral one, the claims of government officials have to be given as much weight as the claims of Mohamed Al-Fayed and the Libyan government. -A1candidate (talk) 14:29, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The complete sentence on Henri Paul reads: "Theorists have alleged that the driver of the Mercedes, acting head of Ritz security Henri Paul, was in the pay of a national security service, though different versions of the allegation name the country of the security service alternately as Britain, France or the United States." Fair enough, but you have manipulated it to mean something which in the article it does not. Similarly you say "A source does not need to be notable to be included, but it has to be reliable." It is the notability of the facts which is at issue as regards the Gaddafi government back in 1998 rather than the source.


 * It is very unlikely that if any directly relevant revelations will emerge from the documents in Snowden's possession. Speculation by editors, without proper sourcing, is OR. Two inquiries found it was a tragic accident with the British jury concluding that it was an unlawfukl killing mainly on the part of a drunk Henri Paul. As far as the truth is concerned, end of story. You clearly think otherwise, as you are free to do, but as I have said before, WP:FRINGE does not allow for any possibility that conspiracy theories are true. Philip Cross (talk) 18:18, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Dispatch VS Despatch
I've done some minor grammar/spelling corrections of the article and am unsure of "despatch". Is this a misspelling of dispatch or is this simply the Commonwealth spelling of dispatch? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.35.161.105 (talk) 02:29, 14 April 2014 (UTC)


 * As you are aware, the article is meant to be written in British English. The one use ofdespatch is actually correct grammar See the Grammarist site. Philip Cross (talk) 08:59, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

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Medical inaccuracies (Terminology only)
Two apparent terminological errors, both from the Henri Paul/Blood samples section. Neither is a major issue, but since this is a high-profile topic, I just want to check before changing them myself.

"[Authorities tested] the more medically conclusive fluid from the sclera (White of the eye)"

The sclera is a layer of tissue, and doesn't have any fluid content. The fluid would have been vitreous fluid from within the eye (often retrieved using a needle pushed through the sclera and into the eye itself).

"[The driver had] 12.8% carbon haemoglobin saturation..."

The correct term would be "carboxyhaemoglobin" (or "-hemoglobin"). The entire paragraph needs rewording to make it more accurate/clear.

Watercleave (talk) 08:06, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Absent argument, I'm going to go ahead and make the change.

Watercleave (talk) 13:40, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

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Inquest Verdict
This is a incorrect statement contained in the article "After hearing evidence at the British inquest, a jury in 2008 returned a verdict of "unlawful killing" by driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi pursuing the car"

The correct statement should be The jury at a British inquest in 2008 returned a verdict of unlawful killing through grossly negligent driving by the driver Henri Paul and the following vehicles.

It was the royal judge in a royal court in his summing up while giving his own opinion. That equated the following vehicles with the paparazzi. This was in opposition to the evidence presented in the trial. That had demonstrated that the eye witness descriptions of the following vehicles large black motorcycles and a large silver car did not match the vehicles a mixture of mopeds one motor cycles and small cars driven by the paparazzi. Or the evidence that the paparazzi did not arrive at the crash until one to two minutes after the crash. The judge also gave his opinion that the following vehicles were not necessarily driving dangerously. The judge withdrew the verdict option of murder and chose the wording of the remaining verdicts. Describing the vehicles that were witnessed surrounding and in front of Diana's car as following rather than surrounding.

The BBC royal correspondent at the trial was the first to misreport and misquote the Jury verdict incorrectly replacing following vehicles with paparazzi. All other media took this incorrect quote as accurate and repeated it.

The verdict was unlawful killing. It is normal for a police investigation to follow such a verdict but not in this case. The following vehicles and there drivers and riders have not been traced. A possible match to the White Fiat Uno involved in the crash in the White Fiat Uno belonging to James Andanson — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:AEE3:F400:6897:B3A6:1D35:AAF8 (talk) 11:31, 5 September 2019 (UTC)