London - Almost a decade after her death, and following three years of painstaking investigations, the first British report into the death of Princess Diana in Paris in 1997 will be made public this week.
The long-awaited report by Sir John Stevens, formerly the head of Scotland Yard and Britain's top policeman, is expected to confirm what most people already knew: The princess, then aged 36, died in a car crash in Paris that was an accident - and no more.
Days before its publication on December 14, British newspapers said the conclusive findings of Stevens had 'systematically demolished every conspiracy theory surrounding the crash.'
A royal reporter for the BBC, the first media organization to get a glimpse of the report, even went as far as stressing that by hailing its unsurprising outcome the public broadcaster should in no way be seen to be 'colluding with the establishment.'
It was a remark that might have aroused, and fuelled, the lingering doubts of his listeners. Indeed, an opinion poll for the BBC suggested that more than three in 10 people in Britain do not believe Diana died in an accident.
However, Stevens, who repeatedly inspected the crash scene in the Pont de l'Alma underpass in Paris and had the wrecked black Mercedes car towed to Britain for a fingertip search, appears to have done thorough detective work.
The key finding in his 400-page report is based on DNA tests on blood samples of Henri Paul, the French driver who smashed the Mercedes on the fateful night of Aug 30, 1997. Diana died in the early hours of August 31.
The tests confirm previous French findings that Paul was three times over the drink-drive limit and had traces of tranquillizers in his blood.
But they also show that the original post-mortem samples were accurate and that the samples could not have been switched, either deliberately or accidentally, British reports said.
The DNA profile from Paul's blood samples were compared with his parents' DNA, and matched, the Stevens report concludes.
According to The Daily Telegraph Monday, the British inquiry is a 'devastating rebuff' to Mohamed al-Fayed, the Harrods's owner whose 42-year-old son, Dodi, died with Diana in the crash.
It 'takes apart' Fayed's claim that the British Secret Service murdered Diana because she was pregnant with Dodi's child, the newspaper said.
Investigators used advanced computer technology to reconstruct the crash scene and took new forensic tests on tiny droplets of the princess's blood from the back seat of the car, which were found not to have the hormone levels of a pregnant woman.
Fayed, who has already announced that he will challenge the findings, was repeatedly interviewed by Stevens during the course of the investigations.
However, the Stevens report, contrary to the investigations by France's Criminal Brigade, states that the 'deadly chase with photographers was a major contributory factor' in the crash.
The British conclusions, which will form the basis for a judicial inquest into the death of Diana and Dodi next January, is likely to come as a relief to Britain's royal family ahead of the 10th anniversary of the crash, commentators said Monday.
But observers doubt that it will, once and for all, lay to rest all suspicions and conspiracy theories.
Sceptics of the official account maintain that many questions remain unanswered.
They include the question why the princess was not wearing a seat belt, why the driver of a white Fiat involved in the crash was never identified and why it took two hours to get Diana to a hospital just six kilometres away.
In his first interview on the case, Professor Andre Lienhart, who reviewed the French emergency services response to the crash, said a post mortem carried out on the princess in Britain 24 hours after the accident showed she was not pregnant.
'I don't think it's possible to stop rumours - what is clear from all the medical staff and paramedics working that night, is that they wanted to save the person in front of them. That is absolutely indisputable,' he told a BBC programme on the crash.
But he added: 'What is certain is that she was not wearing a seat belt and this made things worse. We would like to think that if she had been wearing a seat belt, we'd have been able to save her.'
British royal biographer Nicholas Davies, speaking on the same programme, said: 'The more we are left with so many unanswered questions, the more we are left saying there is only one answer to this - that she was taken out.'
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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