Early, Exclusive Review: ‘Unlawful Killing’

For those who know me, I’m as Anglophile as one can be and a loyal monarchist. It truly  pains me to post this exclusive review of ‘Unlawful  Killing,’  the formal inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed on August 31, 1997.  12 years later, there are still so many questions about what happened that night, despite the rulings from the inquest and Operation Paget. Don’t bother trying to google the title of this documentary either, as you won’t find it.  The British Filmmakers  were trying to  keep it secret as long as possible…its so damning to the Royal Family. They added that they can’t even show this film in England because they’d be immediately arrested for saying such things against the Windsor Clan. By the way,  one of the filmmakers is Keith Allen from ‘Trainspotting’ who happens to be the father of pop star Lily Allen. This film has been mulling around since last year. According to contactmusic.com, Keith tried to have it finished for Cannes 2008, but since it was still being worked on, it wasn’t quite ready to appear at the French film festival.  Obviously it just shows how long its taken to finish  the documentary. One of our loyal WAMG  readers was at a secret screening last night out in Los Angeles and sent us their review of the film.

The documentary’s title, ‘Unlawful Killings,’ comes from the actual legal findings of the inquest. The deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed were ruled “unlawful killingâ€� by the other vehicles that surrounded them in the Alma Tunnel in Paris , and not, like most people have been led to believe, an accident. The original reports indicated that among the contributing factors to the accident were 1) that the driver of the car, Henri Paul, was drunk, and 2) the actual crash was caused by paparazzi on motorcycles chasing the car to get pictures of Diana and Dodi.

The evidence presented in this documentary shows that this is simply not true. First of all, Henri Paul had no history of being an alcoholic, as accused. Receipts from the restaurant that night show that he only had 2 drinks, and video images of him leaving the restaurant do not show him stumbling drunk, but relatively sober with no visible impairment. When his apartment was searched after the accident, very small amounts of alcohol were found – a bottle or two. When a later search was done, the report mysteriously indicated that there was enough alcohol to stock a full bar. The inquest panel questions whether some tampering took place to build the story against Henri Paul. This is not to say he was totally innocent. There is also video of Henri Paul stepping outside the back of the hotel and “signaling� to someone that they are about to leave. This leads us to believe that he was in on the plot and he was not meant to die in the accident. Further more, upon examination of the vehicle after the accident, it was determined that all the seatbelts in the car were in working order except in the seat where Diana was sitting. It was reported that she always wore a seatbelt, but that hers was jammed and she couldn’t wear it, again raising questions of tampering.

Then there is the issue of the paparazzi giving chase. Eye witness reports from the scene say that the car that Diana and Dodi were in was too powerful for the paparazzi on their motorcycles to keep up with and by the time they reached the entrance to the tunnel, the paparazzi were left far behind. Witnesses reported seeing the car surrounded by three or four other high-powered motorcycles and a small Fiat. The motorcycles blocked the car, making it impossible to avoid hitting the Fiat when a bright flash went off in the tunnel seconds before Henri Paul lost control of the car. Questions are raised not only about the mysterious flash that went off, but also as to why the surveillance cameras in the tunnel were turned off, when normally they were recording 24-7. Adding to the conspiracy theory, it was documented that it took an astonishing 37 minutes to get Diana out of the car once emergency personnel arrived on the scene (there was not enough damage to her side of the car to justify it taking that long), and a HORRIFYING 187 minutes before she reached the hospital in an ambulance driving on empty streets.

So there is some of the evidence. But the really compelling and fascinating issues come from the question of why. Why was there a plot to kill Diana and Dodi in the first place? Mohammed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father and owner of Harrod’s Department store in London has his suspicions. These are presented in the film by various interviews and video footage. In a nutshell, according the senior Al Fayed, the Royal Family, led by Prince Phillip (husband of the Queen) are racist and were not going to stand by and watch the royal bloodline diluted by an Arab Muslim like Dodi Al Fayed. In the months leading up to the crash, Diana and Dodi’s relationship had become serious and there were reports that they would marry and that she was even pregnant with his child. There are even accusations that the reason that Diana’s body was embalmed so quickly was so that no pregnancy test could be done on her. When the issue of a blood test was brought up years later, Diana’s blood samples had mysteriously disappeared.

And lastly, the most frightening conclusion from this film is that the Royal Family is above the law. During the inquest, no one was forced to testify, including both Prince Phillip and Prince Charles. The high court most definitely participated in covering up evidence and making special rulings that apply only to the royal family. In a letter that Diana sent to a friend shortly before her death, she wrote “My husband is planning to have me killed in an accident, like in a car with the brake line cut.� Even if this was written by a woman with an overactive imagination, if it were any other family it would have been investigated more thoroughly. I guess it’s good to be a royal.

So there you have it. This  documentary is  the total antithesis of 2006’s ‘The Queen’ which made the Royal Family, with the exception of Prince Phillip, all touchy-feely after the death of Princess Diana. Hopefully, the documentary will find a distributor and soon.