Original Diana car failed to start, documents reveal

THE death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash happened after the vehicle she was meant to be travelling in failed to start, according to official documents released yesterday.

Instead she got into a nearby Mercedes driven by chauffeur Henri Paul, who, tests later revealed, had been three times over the legal alcohol limit.

Diana, 36, and her 42-year-old lover Dodi Al Fayed were killed along with Paul when they crashed in a Paris underpass in August 1997.

Papers released by the British cabinet office under the Freedom of Information Act reveal correspondence between officials in the aftermath of the event.

Conflicting accounts appear in the documents about why the couple had got into the car and there is one suggestion that they were trying to avoid paparazzi who were following them.

But two other documents suggested the car in which they were supposed to leave Paris's Ritz Hotel failed to start including a memo to British Prime Minister Tony Blair on August 31, the day of Diana's death.

It told how the couple arrived at the Ritz the day before and were 'immediately' subject to media attention".

"They tried to leave quickly but the first hire car failed to start," the document, whose author is not revealed, said.

"The second car then left the hotel at speed. It travelled along a stretch of the river and entered the tunnel in which the car crashed."

A separate document, signed "Jay", was sent from Paris on the same day to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who was in Singapore. Michael Jay was ambassador to France at the time. Describing Diana and Dodi's departure from the Ritz, it said: "Because, apparently, their getaway car failed to start, they got into another nearby car driven by a Ritz driver."