Diana probe: al Fayed compensated

Judges at one of France's highest civil courts ordered the French state to pay Mr al Fayed, whose son died alongside the Princess in a Paris car crash in August 1997, almost £5,000 in compensation for the delays, French reports said.

There were problems in establishing that Henri Paul, the couple's driver, was drunk at the time of the accident and a mix-up with his post mortem examination, and especially with his blood tests, created "unnecessary delays in the investigation", the judges said in a ruling on Wednesday.

Mr al Fayed said: "I am delighted that the French court has recognised that I have been denied justice.

"The two pathologists have been condemned for mixing up the blood samples and slowing down the investigation. It supports my view that there was a cover up by the French and an attempt to conceal the truth."

He also repeated his belief that the inquiry should have been treated as a murder investigation.

At the UK inquest into the deaths last year, the Harrods boss implicated many establishment figures in the plot to kill or cover-up the murder of the couple.

Everyone from the security services, including MI6 and the CIA, the French authorities, former Metropolitan Police chiefs Lord Condon and Lord Stevens and even Diana's own sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale came under Mr al Fayed's veil of suspicion.

The Duke of Edinburgh was placed at the centre of the allegations as Mr al Fayed believes he ordered MI6 to orchestrate the crash that killed Dodi, Diana and their driver, Mr Paul.

The inquest also heard conflicting evidence about whether Mr Paul was drunk when he stepped behind the wheel of the doomed Mercedes carrying the Princess of Wales and her lover Dodi Fayed. The inquests concluded on April 7, with a jury returning a verdict that the "People's Princess" and her boyfriend had been unlawfully killed.