No Christmas truce for feuding Fayeds in bitter High Court battle

He has a castle in the highlands, a villa in st Tropez and an estate in surrey. But there i s, alas, no prospect of billionaire former harrods owner Mohamed Fayed enjoying a happy f amily Christmas at any of them, following the latest round in a toxic high Court battle which has pitted his youngest son, Omar, against his younger daughter, Camilla.

In a ruling which has just been delivered, Judge Barbara Fontaine has given permission for the disclosure of some potentially crucial CCTV footage — exactly as 33-year-old Omar hoped.

The footage was recorded at Barrow Green Court, his father’s surrey residence, on the afternoon of May 18.

It was then, according to his initial, incendiary claim, that Omar was subjected to a ferocious assault orchestrated by Camilla and her husband, Mohamed esreb, and inflicted, in part, by family bodyguards.

The claim drew a withering response from Camilla, 35, who, in a reply submitted to the high Court, alleged that there had been ‘no attack’ and that her brother’s ‘general demeanour’ suggested that he had been ‘on drugs’.

Omar vehemently rejected this in another legal submission, stating that, if he appeared to be ‘ hot or sweating profusely or out of breath’, it was because he had been ‘ exercising vigorously’ in their father’s gym — adding that he would rely on ‘CCTV footage’ to prove his case at trial.

That possibility now draws closer following Judge Fontaine’s ruling.

according to Omar, he was ‘pushed/ grabbed’, punched ‘in the face’ by esreb, who, in concert with two bodyguards, allegedly also ‘pushed and punched [him] from behind’, before he was ‘struck on the back of his head, grabbed round his neck and brought to his knees’ and ‘struck on his head again and thrown backwards to the floor where he collided violently with a rowing machine’.

During the final phase of the assault, alleged Omar, Camilla twice called out: ‘Get the phone!’ Though Omar tried to hide his iPhone, it was ‘taken by one of his assailants’.

subsequently, he claimed, he fled from Barrow Court, photographed his injuries, made a complaint to the police and went to hospital.

Neither Omar, who is suing Camilla and esreb for £100,000 damages, nor his sister care to comment. But it’s difficult to envisage the scars healing for many Christmases to come.