Britain's royal coroner asked police to look into theories a conspiracy led to the car crash in Paris that killed Princess Diana and boyfriend Dodi Fayed, saying on Tuesday he was obliged "to separate fact from fiction and speculation."
Coroner Michael Burgess' request -- part of the opening of official inquests into their 1997 deaths -- came as a tabloid newspaper reported Diana believed Prince Charles was plotting to kill her by staging a car accident. Fayed's father said he suspects not only Charles, but also his father, Prince Philip.
A French investigation found the crash was an accident and that driver Henri Paul, who also died, had been drinking. But more sinister explanations for the crash abound, and Burgess said he asked police to investigate whether he should take them up in his inquests.
"I'm aware that there is speculation that these deaths were not the result of a sad but relatively straightforward road traffic accident in Paris," Burgess said.
"I have asked the Metropolitan Police Commissioner [Sir John Stevens] to make inquiries. The results of these inquiries will help me to decide whether such matters will fall within the scope of the investigation carried out at the inquests," he said.
The coroner immediately adjourned his long-awaited inquiry -- Britain's first investigation of the crash -- for at least a year to 15 months, saying he needs that time to review evidence gathered by French authorities and conduct his own investigations.
He acknowledged that "it would have been desirable for these inquests to have been heard and completed long ago." That was impossible because he must rely heavily on French evidence that will not be available to him until all legal proceedings connected to the case there are finished, he said.
On Tuesday, the Daily Mirror tabloid reported that Diana, in a letter to her butler Paul Burrell, claimed her ex-husband "is planning `an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry" his longtime girlfriend Camilla Parker Bowles.
Charles' office said it would not comment on the charge. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, told Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends that the report was "disgraceful" and "absolutely outrageous."
The paper reported the letter in October last year but did not originally identify Charles as the person Diana suspected.
Egyptian-born billionaire Mohammed al Fayed, Dodi Fayed's father, reiterated his belief that Diana, 36, and Dodi, 42, were victims of a plot and said he thought Charles and his father, Prince Philip, were involved.
"It's absolute black and white, horrendous murder," al Fayed told reporters at the formal opening of the separate inquest into his son's death in Reigate, outside London, hours after Burgess opened the Diana inquiry.
"It's the head of the royal family and I suspect not only Prince Charles" but also Queen Elizabeth's husband, Philip, whom he described as "racist at the core." Al Fayed has in the past said Philip plotted against Diana because the royal family objected to her relationship with a Muslim.
The palace dismisses such charges.
Al Fayed has campaigned for a full public inquiry into the deaths.
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