Diana ‘was to announce pregnancy or engagement’

RUMOURS were circulating that Diana, Princess of Wales, was poised to announce a pregnancy or engagement to lover Dodi Fayed on the night of her death, her inquest heard yesterday.

Paparazzi gathering outside the Ritz Hotel in Paris, where the couple were dining on the night of August 30, 1997, had been told to expect an imminent announcement, one witness claimed.

The jury also heard evidence from a chauffeur who said he saw the princess in the back of the mangled car shortly after the crash with her eyes open, apparently conscious.

Thierry Orban, a photographer, told police he had been at home in Paris when he received a call between 9pm and 9.30pm from his chief editor asking him to go to the hotel specifically because news was expected.

“He told me that there were rumours of an announcement that Lady Diana was getting married or having a baby and asked me to go to the Ritz Hotel,” he said in a statement.

Mr Orban, of the Sigma picture agency, told how he initially refused to go because he had people over for dinner. But later, in the early hours of August 31, he was called again and went to the Pont de l’Alma tunnel after the crash.

Mr Orban stayed at the scene of the crash until a police car carrying a group of photographers and the princess’s ambulance left.

He told how he photographed the ambulance when it stopped just a short distance from the Pitie Salpetriere Hospital when the princess’s condition deteriorated sharply.

He said: “The ambulance stopped, the driver got out and got into the back, that was when I took the only photograph of the ambulance which in any case was blurry. It was rocking as if they were doing cardiac massage.”