Diana, Dodi inquests resume for Preliminary Hearings
Pakistan Times Wire Service

LONDON: Preliminary hearings for a long-awaited coroner's inquest into the death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash get under way in London Monday, with more legal wrangling expected.

Proceedings resume three years after her inquest and that of Emad El-Din Mohamed Abdel Moneim "Dodi" Fayed, were opened and adjourned until a British probe into conspiracy theories around the 1997 crash that claimed their lives.

Former senior High Court judge Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss has come out of retirement to act as deputy coroner of the Queen's household after the royal coroner, Michael Burgess, stood down in July last year.

Even though the hearings Monday and Tuesday in court four of the Royal Courts of Justice in central London will centre on legal argument between the interested parties, massive domestic and international interest is expected.

Lawyers for Dodi Fayed's father, Mohammed Al Fayed, are to argue for joint inquests and for any jury to be made up of 11 ordinary members of the public.●