http://www.alfayed.com/details.asp?aid=72


Issue 139, Sep 12- 25, 2001

Time is finally running out for the Official Secrets Act. This unconstitutional, undemocratic act, which was given on a golden tray to British intelligence to keep them above the law, has now been attacked even by Stella Rimington, the woman who was until recently at the very heart of the intelligence mafia.

Isn’t it time for the ordinary British people to rise up and do something about the criminals who really rule us?

Rimington is the woman who, as head of MI5 from 1991 to 1996, did as much as anybody to make sure MI5 and MI6 could commit any kind of outrageous and criminal act and could get away with it by threatening anyone who dared to speak about it with the Official Secrets Act. But now even she admits that the control the OSA gives to the security establishment is too powerful and must be challenged.

Of course, as David Shayler, the MI5 whistleblower, pointed out in a piece in the Mail on Sunday last week, Rimington’s sudden openness has more to do with publicising her book than looking after the rights of the ordinary people of this country. But if this woman — who once directed the spies to bug homes, tap telephones, break into buildings and God knows what else — believes that the OSA is wrongly used to hide criminal behaviour, then how can the government do nothing about it?

The Official Secrets Act is the tool the intelligence services are using to prevent me finding out the truth about what happened when my son, Dodi, and Princess Diana were killed in Paris four years ago. While MI6 and MI5 can hide behind the OSA, they are above the law and can do whatever they like to anybody. No one is safe.

But maybe now the pressure will begin for change to the OSA, so that what really went on that night in Paris can finally be brought out into the open.

As I told John Humphrys when he interviewed me for the BBC’s Today Programme last week, a poll in the Sunday People showed that 89 per cent of the people of this country believe I am right to pursue questions about the murder of Dodi and Diana by MI6, and I will not rest until I prove it, no matter how the intelligence services try to stop me.

There are so many unanswered questions, and fresh ones are coming up all the time. Here’s one just for starters: why was James Andanson, the paparazzo who had been following Dodi and Diana everywhere, burned to death in his car in France, a car which had the same paint colour as that found on the Mercedes at the crash? Why was his office ransacked and all his documents and computer discs taken away?

Richard Tomlinson, the MI6 whistleblower, has said what happened in the tunnel on the night Dodi and Diana died was an exact copy of a plan to kill Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Henri Paul, the driver of the car who worked for the Ritz, had been on MI6’s files for three years before the crash. He disappeared for two hours before the crash, to be briefed about exactly what to do.

When my son told me that there were hundreds of people and lots of paparazzi outside the hotel, I warned him not to move, to stay right where he was. But Henri Paul convinced them that they were safe. Then he took the tunnel towards Charles de Gaulle, when Dodi’s house was on the Champs Elysees, only five or 10 minutes from the hotel. And Henri Paul was found with £2,000 cash on him. Why would a driver carry £2,000 cash?

Richard Tomlinson defected because his conscience could no longer cope with all the things he had seen happening at MI6.

I am working vigorously in the French courts to find out what happened that night in Paris. I’m doing the same in the US, to get the American authorities to release documents in their possession that will show what kind of surveillance was being conducted on Dodi and Diana in the days leading up to their deaths. The US authorities are resisting on the grounds of national security.

What can the murder of two innocent people have to do with national security? If the ordinary people of the United States bring sufficient pressure to bear on their government, one day they will be forced to hand over these records.

But in the country which I have adopted as my own, where I have lived for the last 40 years, where I pay hundreds of millions of pounds in taxes and employ 8,000 people and have employed many thousands more, I can’t get any access to justice. Why? Because MI6 is above the law.

Why can’t MI6 be forced to open its files about what happened? If, as they say, they had nothing to do with the tragedy, then what have they got to lose by opening their files and proving it?

Why can’t the government at least hold a public enquiry into the deaths? I have appealed to the Prime Minister several times, but without success. What’s the problem with a public enquiry? It would put everybody’s minds at rest and get to the truth.

But no. MI6 and MI5 are above the law. If you’re in any doubt about that, the Times reported prominently last week that a senior MI6 officer, John Scarlett, has been appointed to the Cabinet Office, where he alone will decide what secret information the Prime Minister can or cannot see. As always, the intelligence services decide what the government and senior civil servants hear. They can get away with anything, and they use the Official Secrets Act as a weapon to attack anybody who dares to challenge them.

They also use their connections in the press. Private Eye recently reported that Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph, was seen coming out of MI5’s headquarters. Moore and Dominic Lawson, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, have attacked me in more than 300 articles since the tragedy. Is that fair? Why did they do it? Did MI6 tell them to?

Lawson’s wife, Rosa Monckton, who used to run Tiffany’s, has a brother who is a senior MI6 officer. Tiffany’s do good business with Harrods, but I banned Rosa Monckton from the store because she helped MI6 with propaganda about Diana. She was no friend of Diana’s, but she goes on as if she was her closest companion. What hypocrisy! She was only spying on Diana for MI6.

The Royal household could not bear to see the happiness that Diana had found with my son in her last days. For her whole life she had nobody who really cared for her and she was desperate, but in those last months she found love, care and a family she could relate to. And the Royal household would not accept that.

With God’s help, I will find out the truth about the deaths of Dodi and Diana. I will not rest until those responsible are brought to justice. Is this really democracy? Isn’t it time for the politicians to stop MI6 doing what they like?