When Mohammed al-Fayed began making this sensational claim in the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana’s death (almost nine years ago), I thought – as I’m sure many of you did – that he was just a grief-stricken man venting absurd delusions. That all changed, however, when Lord Stevens admitted last week that:

“It is right to say that some of the issues that have been raised by Mr. Fayed have been right to be raised….We are pursuing those. It is a far more complex inquiry than any of us thought.”

Anthony L. Hall is a descendant of the Turks & Caicos Islands, international lawyer and political consultant - headquartered in Washington DC - who publishes his own Internet Weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com offering commentaries on current events from a Caribbean perspective

Lord Stevens is the highly respected former Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police who is now reinvestigating the crash that caused the death of Princess Di and Dodi Fayed. And clearly, just on its face, his admission is almost as sensational as what I assumed were al-Fayed’s delusions. But it immediately added sober and serious implications to al-Fayed’s nefarious claim.

And my suspicions were only heightened when I considered his claim in the context of Diana’s own anguished allegations about how the British royal family (“the firm”), and Prince Philip in particular, conspired to drive her crazy and then banish her – after she had performed her dutiful service by breeding them an heir and a spare.

“My wedding day, I think that was the worst day of my life….I was very, very deathly calm. I felt as though I was a lamb going to the slaughter.”

This was only one of the many sad, pathetic and macabre public statements that made Diana such a sympathetic and tragic heroine in the final years of her life.

Indeed, I’ve always wondered why her revelation that the firm was complicit in making her walk the plank in St Paul’s Cathedral to marry Prince Charles, right after she found out that he betrayed her with Camilla Parker-Bowles, was not enough for Diana’s fanatical fans to demand some royal heads (French-style), metaphorically.

At any rate, I imagine the members of the firm suffered foreboding neck pains when the most damning allegation against them – written by Diana in her diary – was revealed posthumously by Paul Burrell, Diana’s butler and the man she called her “rock”. Because in her diary, Diana allegedly wrote that:

“My husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury to make the path clear for him to marry.”

But the implications of al-Fayed charges and Diana’s allegations became even more sinister and credible when I reflected on the more guarded assertions by Sarah Fergusson, former Duchess of York, about how the firm (and, again, Prince Philip in particular) made her life a living hell - until she too was banished.

And even if I were inclined to accept the firm’s dismissal of them as a grief-stricken man, a scorned and emotionally-challenged bulimic and a rejected and intellectually-challenged porker, respectively, Lord Steven’s admission gave me reason to pause.

It also compelled me to wonder – in a different light - why Her Majesty’s secret service (MI5) kept Diana under such prurient (think “squidgygate” tapes), if not criminal, surveillance so long after she was stripped of her royal title.

Indeed, here’s how Diana explained the firm’s unseemly, intimidating and lingering interest in her life - during a shocking BBC interview in November 1995:

QUESTION: Have you any idea how that conversation came to be published in the national press?

DIANA: No, but it was done to harm me in a serious manner, and that was the first time I'd experienced what it was like to be outside the net, so to speak, and not be in the family.

QUESTION: What do you think the purpose was behind it?

DIANA: It was to make the public change their attitude towards me.

QUESTION: Do you really believe that a campaign was being waged against you? DIANA: Yes I did, absolutely, yeah.

QUESTION: Why?

DIANA: I was the separated wife of the Prince of Wales, I was a problem, fullstop. Never happened before, what do we do with her?

QUESTION: Can't we pack her off to somewhere quietly rather than campaign against her?

DIANA: She won't go quietly, that's the problem.

In hindsight, Diana come across in this exchange like a mafia princess expressing legitimate fears about being whacked by her New York mob family (think Gambinos) for ratting out the family’s shady (criminal) secrets.

I feel constrained to declare that I loath conspiracy theories. And there are almost as many surrounding Diana’s death as there are surrounding the assassination of JFK. But when the former head of London’s 'Met' gives credence to al-Fayed’s claim of a royal conspiracy, knowing the full scope of its implications, then it would be naïve not to infer that there’s a lot more fire than smoke here.

Of course, I appreciate that many people might find it incomprehensible that the firm would have any motive to kill Diana. I am not so incredulous, however. Because I’m acutely aware that people have been “packed off” for far less than the honorable motive of “preserving the Monarchy”. And, as Diana herself seemed to understand all too well, she had become a problem.

Though, here again, it would be convenient to dismiss her suspicions as paranoid delusions. Except that, just as Lord Stevens has now given credence to al-Fayed’s claim, so too has Nicholas Davies, a respected investigative journalist who writes on the Royals and British Intelligence, now given credence to Diana’s suspicions.

More to the point, Davis addresses this question of motive in his forthcoming book, Cover Up, as follows:

"Why would MI5 have undertaken the dastardly and indefensible act of killing Diana?"

The answer is that Diana had, unwittingly, become a potent, powerful political person in her own right; someone who commanded so much love and respect throughout the free world that she could sway voters in the democracies of the West without even trying.

The Monarchy must be preserved, no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice….

NOTE: It is generally accepted that Diana’s death was caused by paparazzi chasing her in a car being driven by a drunk driver, Henri Paul. (A man, curiously enough, who Scotland Yard admitted just last weekend was, in fact, a member of the French Secret Service…It gets “curiouser and couriouser”….). But this drunk-driver theory was effectively debunked last Thursday when a French court ordered the paparazzi involved to pay just one euro ($1.18 or 68p) for their alleged crime…

ENDNOTE: We may never know if Diana was murdered as al-Fayed claims. But Lord Stevens seems determined “to leave no stone unturned” in his criminal investigation. Indeed, he has already summoned Prince Charles for further enquiry.

In Diana’s defense, however, I shall only proffer the immortal words of Woody Allen:

“Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.”