Princess Diana’s ex-protection officer says her security team should have stopped her entering fateful Mercedes
New memoirs claim blame lies with Fayed's guards
PRINCESS Diana's security guards should never have let her get into the Mercedes in which she tragically lost her life, a former royal protection officer has claimed.
Ex-guard Ken Wharfe, who resigned from Diana's service in 1993, said the Princess's death in Paris shouldn't have happened and has blamed the "new" security team who were at her side at the time for what happened.
According to , writing in his updated memoirs, Wharfe says he knew better than anyone how to protect the royal as he was her bodyguard for six years - while Trevor Rees-Jones, the sole survivor of the crash that killed her and lover Dodi Fayed in the French capital as well as their driver Henri Paul, had only been with her for six weeks.
Wharfe writes: "There have been times, since I left Diana’s side in 1993, when I have questioned whether I was right to resign. This awful moment was the most poignant. The Princess, whom I had guarded for so many years, lay dead in a Paris hospital.
"My mind kept returning to the same questions: Could anything have been done to save her? And how could this have happened?
"So, on behalf of all the professional men and women of the Met’s protection squad, let me say that neither Rees-Jones nor any of the other bodyguards who attended Diana in the two months preceding her death were from our department.
"I am still angry beyond words that this team of ‘bodyguards’ let her come to harm. Our department had the care of her personal safety for some 15 years: Fayed’s crew were in charge of her security for just eight weeks before she died.
"Rees-Jones was a former soldier who had not received the training necessary to protect a member of the Royal Family. When he first heard he’d been appointed by the Fayed family to guard Diana in France, he could have informally contacted Scotland Yard for a briefing.
"Instead, according to his memoirs, he simply reflected that he was in for ‘a hell of an interesting trip’.
"Worryingly, he also bragged he was a ‘good bloke in a fight’. That raises serious questions about his suitability. The ability to acquit oneself well in a brawl is not qualification enough to protect someone like Diana."
The Princess of Wales' former bodyguard said the primary role of protection teams is to use "intelligence, contacts and instincts to keep their charge out of harm's way by avoiding confrontation".
He claims Army man Rees-Jones had a "lack of understanding of the paparazzi" - instead thinking of the press as "the enemy" and photographers as "snipers" with their long lenses "like rifle barrels".
Wharfe continues: "He also seems to have been overawed by the Princess. In his book, he mentions how attractive he found her, and that he wanted to do things to please her. This is incompatible with a mission to protect. For the sake of Diana’s safety, I could never be in awe of her.
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"Most seriously, Rees-Jones committed a grave error of judgement by allowing Dodi Fayed to enter into a game of ‘beat the paparazzi’, which led to the fatal high-speed crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel on August 31, 1997."
He admits however that the beginnings of a tragedy in the making started when Diana rejected the Queen's offer to keep her round-the-clock Scotland Yard protection in place.
The ex-security officer adds: "If any Metropolitan Police protection officer had been with her, Diana would never have got into a car with a drunk driver: not only experience but common sense would not allow it.
"The Princess, like most of the Royal Family, accepted her police protection officers as a fact of life — though she had little idea of the training required to do the job effectively.
"With increasing irritation and incredulity, I listened over the years to the conspiracy theories promoted by Dodi’s father, Mohamed Fayed, and his supporters.
"I studied the official reports of the days and hours leading up to the crash. I can say with certainty, drawing on decades of police experience, that Diana’s death was not murder but a dreadful accident that should have been avoided.
"She was not the victim of shadowy figures who regarded her as an embarrassment to the Establishment, but of her boyfriend’s erratic behaviour and her bodyguard’s mistakes.
"The first mistake was to use a bodyguard hired by the Fayed family, who was unable to say no to his employers. Dodi ordered Henri Paul to drive that night: the bodyguard should have stepped in, and refused to allow Diana into the car.
"Dodi ordered the chauffeur to drive too fast: Rees-Jones should have countermanded that. A police protection officer wouldn’t have hesitated to override Dodi’s wishes.
"I also question why the bodyguards put such emphasis on trying to shield the couple from paparazzi from the moment they arrived in Paris. It should have been far more important to focus on their physical safety. The paparazzi were firing flashguns, not bullets."
After the Princess and Dodi Fayed arrived in France on that fateful night in 1997, the pair went to a villa at Le Bourget in west Paris - once home to the Duke of Windsor, the former Edward VIII, and is now owned by Mohammed Fayed.
After a few hours however they called the security team to take them to the Ritz hotel, also owned by the Fayeds, and later Dodi decided he wanted to return to his apartment on the Champs-Elysees for dinner.
Wharfe claims it would have been safer to stay at the villa and if he were in charge that day he would have urged them to do that as it would have avoided the "scuffle with photographers that took place outside [on the Champs-Elysees] as Diana left."
He writes: "Emotions were running high on both sides, with the paparazzi eager to secure pictures and the couple anxious to be left in peace, but on Dodi’s instructions they continued this unnecessary tour of Paris.
"At this point, if I had been with Diana, I would have intervened. Rees-Jones and the other bodyguard, Kes Wingfield, didn’t do that: they were paid employees of the man they were guarding, unable to ignore or gainsay his decisions.
"That said, there was nothing to prevent them from telephoning the local gendarmerie to ask for back-up without informing Dodi first.
"The Princess was now shuttling around Paris, in a highly charged emotional state. She was behaving irrationally and at times almost hysterically, her mood alternating between excitement and panic.
"Later, they headed back to the Ritz for dinner, but were paranoid about photographers and, fearing a paparazzo would somehow see them, retired to their suite.
Then came the fatal error: Dodi ordered his team to take him and Diana to his Champs-Elysees apartment.
"He ruled that his usual chauffeur, Philippe Dourneau, should drive the Range Rover away from the hotel as a decoy, while the couple were taken in a leased Mercedes driven by Henri Paul.
"When Rees-Jones and Wingfield tried to protest, Dodi overruled them. The bodyguards lacked experience and authority.
"So it was that the Princess was placed in a car with a driver who, the security team knew, had been drinking all day.
"Another of Fayed’s bodyguards had noticed the smell of alcohol on him at lunch.
"By 10pm, both Rees-Jones and Wingfield had seen Henri Paul downing pastis, a very strong spirit, in the Ritz bar — though apparently he told them it was pineapple juice. I am convinced that Scotland Yard protection officers would have detected immediately that he was drinking alcohol.
"However, Paul was a senior man in the Fayed organisation, which may have inhibited the bodyguards.
"As the Mercedes pulled away from the Ritz, Paul is said to have leaned out of the window to issue a ‘catch us if you can’ challenge to the waiting paparazzi. It was not the act of a sober driver.
"It is clear that the bodyguard was alarmed at Paul’s driving before the accident, for he tried to put on his seat belt. He failed to buckle it in time — what saved his life was the air bag.
"But he should have instructed all the passengers — including the driver — to fasten their belts before they left the Ritz."
Wharfe says when he worked with Princess Diana she would "automatically fasten her belt the moment she got into the car". Neither her nor Dodi was wearing one at the time of the crash.
He dismisses the conspiracy theories that claim the accident was caused on purpose by the driver of a Fiat Uno and a motorcyclist who blinded the driver with a flash gun, as well as those that say the Princess' death was ordered by the Royal Family and intelligence agencies to prevent her marrying Dodi, a Muslim.
In the updated memoirs, "Diana: Closely Guarded Secret" the former bodyguard also vents about the difficult task of looking after security at her funeral claiming Dodi's father Mohamed Fayed insisted ht needed "SAS trained guards by his side in Westminster Abbey" which was "ridiculous...as if he outranked the Queen or Prime Minister, neither of whom had personal bodyguards beside them".
He adds: "The reverberations of her death travelled around the world, touching millions of lives, just as she had touched them when she was alive.
"I hope people will remember her as she was at her best — a warm-hearted and fun-loving woman who really did make a difference.
"It is probably a vain hope, but I owe it to her."
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