The jury in the Diana, Princess of Wales inquest today returned a verdict of unlawful killing through negligent driving by Henri Paul in the Mercedes and the vehicles of the paparazzi.

They singled out Henri Paul’s drink driving as a contributory factor for the crash in the Alma Tunnel in Paris in which she and Dodi Fayed were killed on August 31, 1997.

They were being followed by paparazzi after leaving the Ritz Hotel, and a large amount of evidence centred on how closely they had followed the Mercedes in the minutes before the crash.

At last the focus of the blame is being turned from the outrageously improbable conspiracy theories to the real culprits : the Ritz Hotel’s security arrangements and the chasing pack of photographers who appear to have had Henri Paul in their pockets.

All this has been clear since the French magistrate’s meticulous report many years ago.

An interesting point arising is that the verdict clashes with that of the Paget Report by Scotland Yard, which concluded it was “a tragic accident”. The jury has defined culpability here and that has not pleased Mohamed Fayed whose representatives still maintain his blame-deflecting case.

This verdict leaves him open to private prosecutions for what the jury calls “gross negligence”.

Lord Justice Scott Baker has started his summing up of the Diana Inquest in London. He began by stating that “there is not a shred of evidence of any conspiracy” to murder Diana by any person or government agency. It seems even Mohamed al Fayed’s lawyers are no longer making that claim.

Prince Philip, maliciously accused of a conspiracy to murder Diana

However, the judge has left the way open for an Unlawful Killing verdict by either Henri Paul, who drove the car while under the influence of alcohol, or the paparazzi, who chased the vehicle into the Alma tunnel that night.

The evidence also points to Henri Paul having tipped off the paparazzi that Diana would be leaving by the rear entrance of The Ritz Hotel in Paris. He appears to have received a cash payment for this transaction.

A verdict of Accidental Death seems more likely, but if Unlawful Killing due to Henri Paul’s actions is handed down by the jury, probably next week, it leaves the way open for massive damages claims against Mohamed al Fayed by all who have been traduced and falsely accused by him over the past decade.

It is unlikely that the most persistently accused, the Duke of Edinburgh, will take any action now.

Lord Justice Scott Baker is totally vindicated in his controversial decision to widen the scope of the Inquest to cover every aspect of the wilder conspiracy claims. There can be no doubt that what happened that night was a tragic accident, caused by a catalogue of events involving alcohol, drugs, bad decisions and minor betrayals, but above all, an almost total lack of security cover at The Ritz Hotel in Paris.

Why did Diana only have one bodyguard to protect her? And why did she make that fateful journey with no backup vehicle following behind?

With Mohamed al Fayed taking the witness stand today at the Diana inquest, the European Court of Human Rights has thrown out his allegations about the deaths of Princess Diana and his son, Dodi. The judges in Strasbourg found no evidence of foul play, and will hand down a verdict that the cause of death was a simple road traffic accident. They said Al Fayed’s case was “manifestly ill-founded” and ruled it “inadmissible”.

This is the third major investigation into the crash, and each has reached the same conclusion. Given the overwhelming weight of evidence presented, it would be perverse if the inquest did not also reach a similar verdict in five weeks when, thankfully, this three-ring circus finally comes to an end.

So how will the man who has generated all this activity perform today? The consensus is that he may fight his corner quite well. When he took the witness stand in 1999 at Neil Hamilton’s libel action over claims that the former Conservative MP took cash and gifts from Al Fayed in exchange for asking questions in the House of Commons, the Harrod’s boss was said to have performed “brilliantly”.

However, the direction of travel of this inquest is so much against him that he may struggle with some of the most aggressive questioning yet as old scores are settled and his wild accusations regurgitated.

He will take the stand for two days. It would be gruelling for any 75-year-old, but he will reap a whirlwind of his own making.

Update: At the inquest, Mohamed al Fayed has called the Royal Family the “Dracula family” and Prince Philip a Nazi who should be sent back to Germany. He also implicated hundreds of people in the alleged “consipiracy” by accusing French police, security services and investigators, as well as the Metropolitan Police, the Royal Family and MI6. That would make it the biggest conspiracy in history.

Paul Burrell has been caught on tape by The Sun newspaper claiming he lied under oath at the inquest and threw in a lot of “red herrings”. Perjury is a very serious offence and the Coroner has called for a copy of the video.

Why is it that most of Diana’s friends appear to be complete nutcases?

It didn’t take long after the Diana Inquest under Lord Justice Scott Baker got underway before Mohamed al Fayed was accusing the Coroner of bias.

Princes William and Harry at Diana’s funeral

The Coroner’s opening remarks covered the main points of the case “dispassionately” leading to an immediate charge of bias from the Fayed team. Clearly a lot of delaying tactics are going to be deployed by those who don’t want the truth to emerge.

The main points include :

1. The Coroner said Princess Diana was taking contraceptive pills when she died, nor could she have been pregnant by Dodi because of the timescales involved. He claimed it would have been impossible because the two of them were not even in a relationship when the rumour emerged.

2. Princess Diana told her solicitor that she believed the Queen planned to abdicate in April 1998 to make way for Charles, a claim denied because the Queen has always said she would never abdicate.

3. Diana told her lawyer, Lord Mishcon, that she feared that both she and Camilla Parker Bowles would be “put aside” to allow Prince Charles to marry his sons’ nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke. Lord Mishcon wrote that Diana told him “the Queen would be abdicating in April and the Prince of Wales would then assume the throne”.

4. Lord Mishcon, who admitted he could “not believe what I was hearing”, added that Diana “was convinced that there was a conspiracy that she and Camilla would be put aside”. Diana also told him that Miss Legge-Bourke had undergone an abortion and that she would obtain a medical certificate to prove it.

5. The jury were told that, on the night of the crash, Henri Paul told the waiting paparazzi “not to try to catch them because they would not succeed”. He had virtually challenged them to a race.

The case continues, with the accumulation of evidence so far supporting the two police inquiries previously carried out.