Flashing lights, swarming paparazzi, a mysterious Fiat Uno, a swiftly aborted proposal to assassinate a Balkan leader - what will jurors make of it all in reaching a judgment on the deaths of Princess Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed? Testimony has ranged far and wide in an extraordinary coroner's inquest, without shedding much light on claims that they were victims of a plot directed by Prince Philip. The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, is expected to begin his summation Monday, which may take several days before it goes to the jury. The key question for the jurors is whether the car crash in a Paris road tunnel on Aug. 31, 1997, was an accident or something more sinister. Mohamed Al Fayed has not budged from his belief that his son and the princess died at the hands of British security agents, acting at the prince's behest. French police concluded that the couple died in an accident, caused in part by excessive speed and by the high blood-alcohol level of the driver, Henri Paul. A British police investigation reached the same conclusion. More than 240 witnesses have given evidence since the inquest began on Oct. 2. Al-Fayed's late bid to force the coroner to summon Prince Philip to testify, and for written questions to be put to Queen Elizabeth II, was summarily rejected by a higher court. The inquest was in part an exploration of how the couple's speeding Mercedes came to slam into a concrete pillar, after apparently having a glancing collision with a white Fiat Uno; and in part an examination of Al-Fayed's belief that he knew who drove the Uno, who employed him and why. Diana's close friends, Prince Philip's private secretary, a former head of the Secret Intelligence Service and Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, are among those who have been in the witness box. There has been evidence that Diana feared dying in a car crash, but also had speculated about death in a helicopter or airplane crash; there was testimony that she feared Prince Philip, her former father-in-law. Some witnesses near the Alma tunnel said they saw flashes of light in the instant before the crash, other witnesses didn't notice any. Al-Fayed's claim is that flashing lights disoriented the driver and sent the couple's car skidding into a crash. Little evidence was presented to back up Al-Fayed's claims that his son and Diana were engaged, that she was pregnant and that Philip ordered their murder. As the inquest progressed, some distance opened between Al-Fayed and the lawyers working for him. Michael Mansfield, Al-Fayed's main advocate, steered away from accusing Philip or of claiming that MI6 assassinated the couple. He did suggest that rogue agents might have been involved. “Mr. Al-Fayed ... has certain beliefs which he has made clear. He is plainly not a member of MI6 or, certainly, the establishment either,” Mansfield told the coroner on Feb. 20. Mansfield said he had never discounted Al-Fayed's beliefs but he did focus more on some with more evidence present. Mansfield suggested Diana's land mines program was the motive for the conspiracy, and elements of the government and the arms-industry were frightened that Diana was assembling a dossier on landmines which was capable of exposing historical British involvement in Angola as an arms dealers. __
