Fayed approved doomed exit plan

Mohamed Fayed personally approved the Ritz Hotel ‘exit plan’ that resulted in the deaths of his son Dodi and Princess Diana in Paris. Kes Wingfield, one of one of two bodyguards assigned to the couple, told a High Court jury that he and his colleague Trevor Rees - the only survivor of the Alma Tunnel car crash in August 1997 - had made clear to Dodi that his scheme for the couple to leave by the back door of the Ritz Hotel was "a terrible plan". When the bodyguards objected, telling Dodi that there would be no back-up car and no security guards, Dodi replied that, “It’s been approved by MF, approved by my father.”

“If the name of ‘the boss’ was mentioned, there was no further argument,” Wingfield told the jury. “Any member of his staff just had to say ‘MF wants it done’, and it would be done, although sometimes they took his name in vain when he had not actually said it.”

Last week Rees gave similar evidence to the inquest into the couple's deaths but he admitted to having memory loss after suffering severe injuries from the crash, in which he was the front-seat passenger.

Wingfield also told the inquest that he and Rees had continually asked the Fayed organisation for backup, as they needed eight people to guard the Princess properly, but their requests were ignored. Meanwhile Mohamed Fayed's immediate reaction to the news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was to blame the Duke of Edinburgh, Wingfield said.