Lawyers to argue Diana driver’s sample not his

LAWYERS are expected to argue about the authenticity of blood samples from Princess Diana’s driver when an inquest into her death resumes, a spokesman for her late partner’s father said yesterday.

Michael Cole, representing Dodi al Fayed’s father Mohammed, said their legal team and those for driver Henri Paul’s family would submit the blood tested after the 1997 crash was not his.

The saga returns to London’s High Court tomorrow, with a preliminary hearing to determine the scope of the inquest when it gets under way later this year.

A French judicial inquiry and a Metropolitan Police review concluded that Paul, the head of security at al Fayed’s Ritz Hotel in Paris, was over the drink-drive limit and on prescription drugs at the time of the crash.

Diana, Dodi and Paul died while her bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was injured.

But Mohammed al Fayed has rejected the report, which said the August 31 smash in a Paris tunnel was an accident.

“We are anticipating in the hearing on Friday that we will be saying... that the blood sample of Henri Paul, the chauffeur, is not the blood sample of Henri Paul,” said Mr Cole.

“And what’s more, that the Scotland Yard experts have given up trying to prove that it is not.”