Hurtful allegations
Sir: William Cash told me he could not remember meeting Dodi Fayed but had been told he once attended a party at which Dodi was present. With these shining cre- dentials, he attempts a once-over-lightly
LETTERS
profile of Dodi (`No tears here for Dodi', 20 September), which is really an exercise in dropping as many Hollywood names as possible (17). However, he does manage to slip in a sly mention of cocaine. although Dodi has never been connected with drugs.
To quote Mr Cash's piece back to him, `Are you for real, pal?' It has not been tabloid reporters who have put the most disgusting and outrageous allegations to me about Dodi Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales, but the employees of allegedly seri- ous British newspapers. Although they are false, the very fact that the allegations are made is most hurtful to people trying to cope with unbearable grief.
`Cocaine, pregnancy, driver suicide?' was the headline of Nicholas Farrell's first piece from Paris (13 September) and even the fig-leaf of a question mark cannot hide your shame. There is not a scrap of evi- dence for any of those three allegations and Mr Farrell does not offer any. That does not stop him returning to the subject in a further attempt to defame the dead (`How fast was Dodi?', 20 September).
Let me correct a few errors: Dodi's first car was a Mini not a Ferrari; in Los Ange- les, where no one would wish to appear in a hurry and the speed restrictions are vigor- ously enforced, he drove his Ferrari sensi- bly; he was always telling people he drove with to slow down; Mohamed Al Fayed does not love Rolls-Royces and always trav- els by Mercedes-Benz; I did not say Dodi had a Mercedes in London because his vehicle was a Range Rover; Dodi skied well and fast but only his neck was on the line on the slopes.
Mr Farrell's journalistic technique is best seen when he writes: 'Mr Al Fayed employed a Glaswegian professor of pathology to contest the first two blood tests done on the driver Henri Paul, which found him to be more than three times over the French drink-drive limit, on the grounds that the blood sample used might have been contaminated.'
The 'Glasgow professor' is Peter Vanezis, a world leader in forensic pathology who was called in by the United Nations to investigate the mass graves in Bosnia and Rwanda. As Regius Professor of Forensic Medicine and Science at Glasgow Universi- ty, he advised in the case of the purported Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia.
What Professor Vanezis provided was an entirely objective analysis of the first result — not 'the first two blood tests' — and he said it was 'unsafe and unfair' to reach any firm conclusions upon it. Mr Farrell men- tions 'a third test' but neither Professor Vanezis nor the Hotel Ritz lawyer has ever received the report of that analysis.
Mr Farrell speculates about what hap- pened in the car on the last journey of Dodi and Princess Diana. This is something I have never done. He guesses that Dodi said, Put your foot down,' to the driver because one of the paparazzi said so. Mr Farrell does not know. The bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones may know, and we should await his testimony and the other facts which are emerging, piece by piece, about a second car in the crash.
But there is one verdict that needs no delay: there is more to the discredit of those who are alive and rushing to judg- ment than there is to those who are dead and cannot defend themselves.
Michael Cole
Harrods, Knightsbridge, London SW1
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