Ex-Met chief: we should have questioned Bashir on Diana
Detective who won the trust of Princess’s closest friends speaks for first time about top-secret inquiry
MARTIN BASHIR should have been interviewed under caution as part of the police investigation into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner who led the inquiry has suggested.
The disgraced former BBC journalist would “definitely” have been questioned had the senior police team, led by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, known about the web of lies Bashir fed the late princess to secure his Panorama interview, fuelling her paranoia and the conspiracy theories about her death.
It would also have meant the Prince of Wales would have avoided the humiliation of being interviewed by police about claims that he plotted to kill his ex-wife, said the former police chief.
Had Bashir come forward during the Operation Paget inquiry, or the subsequent inquest, critical questions on Diana’s state of mind could have been answered, saving her loved ones untold anguish. “Had we known about Bashir before the conclusions of the inquiry we would have definitely gone to interview him, possibly under caution,” Lord Stevens told The Sunday Telegraph.
“Why didn’t he come forward? We didn’t see him and when you think about it, that’s inexcusable. He’d have known how culpable he was in terms of her state of mind.”
Lord Stevens and members of his team feature in a new Channel 4 documentary, Investigating Diana: Death in Paris, in which they describe how they trawled through all 104 allegations and conspiracy theories about the death.
Lord Stevens said Bashir’s actions linked directly to the letters the Princess wrote two years before her death suggesting that her ex-husband was plotting to kill her in a car accident to pave the way for him to marry their children’s nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke.
“All of it is entwined, Lord Stevens said. “And if you look at it in total, together, his actions are pretty serious.”
Scotland Yard announced last year it would not launch a criminal investigation into the Panorama interview. Ms Legge-Bourke last month won damages of around £200,000 from the BBC.
The stakes could not have been higher for the small team of Scotland Yard detectives tasked with investigating the myriad conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
But with such a sensitive inquiry came intense public interest, much of it fuelled by unfounded rumours of state-sponsored murder that were believed, in part at least, by about 80 per cent of the population.
There were dark forces at play. Members of the Metropolitan Police team working on Operation Paget were routinely followed and there were fears that personal phones would be tapped.
Their HQ was switched from the Yard to a nondescript office in Putney, west London, carefully assessed for security. Access, views and communication lines were scrutinised.
For the officers involved, the
‘This [ TV series] is just the final piece of the Diana puzzle really’
pressure was overwhelming.
Det Insp Jane Scotchbrook was brought on board to investigate the most personal sonal strands of the inquiry.
The only nly woman working full time on the team, am, it was her responsibility to find out ut whether the late Princess had been pregnant, whether she had been engaged gaged and whether she had been concerned cerned about her safety.
It involved lved speaking to Diana’s closest confidantes, onfidantes, asking them to share her r secrets, intimate conversations and hopes for the future.
So thorough rough was the investigation that she even had to work out her menstrual al cycles.
The pressure essure took its toll. Unable to o speak to close friends or r family about her work and d fearful that there could be attempts to discredit her in order to undermine ne the investigation, she was alone.
“We had ad concerns that people would ould want to know what hat we were finding,” Ms Scotchbrook, now ow retired from the force, , told The Sunday Telegraph h in her first newspaper er interview. “The security urity around it was all so o tight. I found it quite isolating ating actually.
“I felt I couldn’t have telephone e conversations with friends. I wouldn’t discuss the case, but you just didn’t want anyone to find out anything about you. You just couldn’t have a release just to chat and think about other stuff. It was all quite difficult from that perspective.”
Such was the impact that even today, 18 years after the inquiry was established, Ms Scotchbrook, 56, broke down as she spoke of her pride in its success, noting that against the odds, there were no leaks.
“We did do a really good job,” she said. “Gosh, the lengths we went to. I don’t know if when we started we knew how big or wide-reaching an inquiry that was going to be.
“But it was. We looked into absolutely everything. We were living and breathing this thing.”
The team of 14 experienced officers, led by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former Met commissioner, was told from the outset that it would have to be fastidious about keeping every element of its work under wraps.
Ms Scotchbrook said: “The office was chosen very carefully – what floor and anything else – just to eliminate as far as possible any risk of anyone being able to use anything that would give them any access to what we were doing. The security of the doors was very strict, what it was overlooking, the windows… Certainly, that was all discussed and how we all had to be so careful.”
The detective successfully gained the trust of the late Princess’s small coterie of friends, who provided as much information as they could.
They included Rosa Monckton, with whom Diana spent five days on holiday just two weeks before her death, as well as Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and the Princess’s elder sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale, both of whom she spoke to two days before her death.
She also spoke to James Hewitt, the Army officer with whom the Princess had a relationship between 1986 and 1991.
“It was very personal,” she said. “I was having to ask some intimate questions. You’re looking into medical records and emotions and feelings of a Princess, and those sorts of things should never have to become public.
“It was about pregnancy and engagement… the timing tim and chronology was key. So it had to t be her feelings as near to her death as was possible.”
She added: “I was amazed am really, how helpful her confidantes confid were because as we all know, know when we speak to female friends friend you do talk in confidence.”
She said the Princess Princes “compartmentalised” her friends, meaning m they did not often speak to ea each other.
Operation Paget, which took three years and cost c £3.7million, concluded in 2006 20 that the Princess and Dodi D Fayed had died as a result resu of a tragic accident and that there was no conspiracy conspirac and no cover-up. A s subsequent inquest jury agreed.
Ms Scotchbrook Scotch said she hoped a new four-part Channel 4 documentary, doc Investigating Diana: D Death in Paris, which starts st tonight, will draw a line lin under speculation about ab the Princess’s death dea before the 25th anniversary anniver of the tragedy on Aug A 31.
The series recounts the dual inquiries inquirie into the Paris car crash – the first by the French Brigade Criminelle in 1997 and the second by the Met in 2004. “Hopefully, if people watch it, they’ll understand what we did,” she said. “And hopefully that can give some reassurance that we did the best job we could. This is just the final piece of the puzzle really.”
Lord Stevens agreed. “The more we’re transparent with this, the better it is,” he said. “No one has put together anything like this before in terms of continuity. We can leave it [for future generations] as a record of what went on.”
Ms Scotchbrook stressed that despite its unique circumstances, Operation Paget was tackled like every other investigation. “We did it to the best of our ability,” she said. “Putting aside the personalities [involved] we just did the best we could have done and would have done anyway.”
Asked if anything she had been told by the Princess’s friends had stuck with her, she replied: “I think she was just looking forward to getting back to her boys.”