Fayed’s Diana theories collapse in court

Mohamed Fayed looked on grimly on Thursday as his long-held claim of a great conspiracy behind the deaths of his son Dodi and the Princess of Wales suddenly unravelled at London's Royal Courts of Justice. The moment came when, after 69 days of evidence at a cost of £2.4m to the taxpayer, Fayed's own investigator admitted at the inquest that he could not substantiate any of his boss’s claims.

In one hour of devastating admission, John Macnamara, a former senior detective at Scotland Yard, was forced to acknowledge that he had no evidence that Diana had been engaged to Dodi, or that was pregnant at the time of their deaths - apart from what Fayed had told him.

He also admitted that in seeking to undermine the accepted evidence that the chauffeur Henri Paul was drunk, he had lied on an American television programme when he said Paul had drunk only pineapple juice before the fateful car journey.

The former detective chief superintendent grew increasingly uncomfortable on the witness stand as Richard Horwell QC continued his cross-examination. Macnamara admited that he had no evidence of a conspiracy involving either the Duke of Edinburgh, the British and French security services, or the then-British ambassador to Paris to kill the couple - despite having made sworn police statements to the contrary.

Fayed, the owner of Harrods, who is represented by Michael Mansfield QC, will be called to give evidence to the inquest on Monday.

During the proceedings Lord Justice Scott Baker reprimanded Macnamara for lying. "As a former chief superintendent surely you above anybody are aware of telling the truth in public ... a half truth is not good enough ... One of the problems for the jury is if you tell lies on some occasions, when can they tell you are telling the truth on other occasions?" Macnamara replied: "I have come here to tell the truth."

There were tense scenes in the courtroom earlier in the day when Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police who headed an inquiry into the crash, angrily demanded an apology for "scurrilous" allegations by Fayed that his three-year, £3.7m investigation into the crash had been negligent.