PROBE INTO SAS LINK TO DEATH
CLAIMS ELITE UNIT WAS BEHIND PRINCESS’ KILLING
THE SAS are investigating claims the elite unit was involved in the death of Princess Diana.
Allegations that the Who Dares Wins regiment had a hand in the accident that killed her are to be reinvestigated as part of a wide-ranging probe into the activities of the unit.
The move follows claims that a rogue British special forces unit carried out illegal killings in Afghanistan.
Now, all claims of illegal activities involving the unit, including Diana’s alleged assassination, are to be looked at.
It is understood the probe will be undertaken by serving members of the unit, who have already begun reviewing controversial operations.
A senior source said: “The regiment has taken a beating in PR terms in the last few weeks over the allegation that its members took part in illegal killings in Afghanistan.
“Now there is a view that more accusations could come out in the near future.
“In a bid to pre-empt further allegations from surfacing, all controversial incidents, dating back to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, will be looked at again.”
The SAS’s alleged involvement in Diana’s death emerged in a letter written in 2011 and made public three years ago. The letter was sent to the then-commanding officer of the unit by the parents-in-law of another special forces soldier.
It alleged that a member of the unit boasted the SAS “was behind Princess Diana’s death”.
Diana was killed in August 1997 after suffering serious injuries in a car crash in Paris.
Her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and the driver of the car, Henri Paul, were also killed.
Dodi’s father, Mohammed AlFayed, maintains that the crash was the result of a conspiracy involving agents of the British state.
The letter, which was sent to the head of the SAS in September 2011, revealed how one member of the regiment waged a campaign of terror and abuse against his estranged wife and her parents following the collapse of the couple’s marriage.
The seven-page handwritten account told how the soldier allegedly attempted to rape his wife, abused and threatened her family and swindled his parents-in-law out of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The SAS soldier allegedly boasted that he had killed “women and children” and threatened to “make his wife disappear”.
But it was the allegation that the SAS were implicated in Diana’s death which was the most disturbing. The letter stated: “He is a real threat to all of us here. He remind- ed my daughter of a man in his unit who had matrimonial trouble and he went home and shot her and the family.
“He also told her that it was the SAS who arranged Princess Diana’s death and that has been covered up.”
An inquest in 2008 into the deaths of Diana, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul returned a verdict of unlawful killing and grossly negligent driving of the Mercedes they were in and of the vehicles following.
A subsequent ‘scoping exercise’ by Met detectives when allegations of SAS involvement first surfaced was launched. It found that while the comments may have been made by a member of the unit, there was no proof the SAS was involved.