French Police Believe Car Hampered Sedan In Which Diana, Fayed Died

Investigators were searching on Sunday for the driver of a car they believe might have been trying to slow down the Mercedes carrying Diana, Princess of Wales, last Sunday morning so photographers pursuing on motorcycles could get a shot of her through the window, lawyers involved with the case said.

Bernard Dartevelle, a lawyer for the family of Dodi Fayed, Diana’s companion, said police had interviewed several witnesses who would testify to having seen a car and one or two motorcycles maneuvering near the Mercedes in a way that could have caused it to go out of control.

Two unnamed witnesses quoted by the Paris newspaper Journal du Dimanche on Sunday said they had seen the Mercedes accelerate to pass a slower car traveling immediately in front of it. They also said two people on a motorcycle followed immediately behind.

In a slightly different version of the events, Francois Levy, an unemployed harbor pilot in Rouen who was farther ahead, said he saw the headlights of a car in front of the Mercedes and what appeared to be a motorcycle veer in front of it just before it lost control.

The princess died after the car went out of control at about 12:30 a.m. last Sunday at a speed that investigators and witnesses have put in excess of 90 mph and rammed a support pillar in a tunnel under the Place de l’Alma. The driver, who was killed in the crash along with Fayed, was legally drunk at the time, prosecutors said. The speed limit in the tunnel is 30 mph.

Fayed’s father, Mohamed, the owner of the Ritz Hotel where the driver, Henri Paul, was assistant director of security, is a civil party to the investigation proceedings and requested another test of blood from Paul’s body. A sample was taken Friday, but investigators did not make the results available on Sunday.

Nine photographers and one of their motorcycle drivers have been placed under investigation for possibly contributing to the causes of the accident and the deaths by reckless driving and failing to come to the aid of the victims.

All were released after two days of interrogation by detectives and prosecutors last week, but two had to pay $16,700 bail and were barred from practicing their profession as long as the investigation lasts. The two were Romuald Rat of the Gamma agency and Christian Martinez of the Angeli agency.

Rat has acknowledged being among the first to reach the scene, opening the right rear door to take Diana’s pulse to see if she was alive and taking pictures of the wreck.

He and other photographers said they tried to help, and some said they tried to dial 15, the emergency ambulance service number in Paris, or 17, the police number, to summon emergency crews. Witnesses have said they saw photographers snapping pictures of the smoking wreck.

Serge Arnal, a photographer for the Stills agency who was chasing Diana’s car that night, tried to call but misdialed, according to his lawyer, Jean-Marc Coblence. “He panicked,” Coblence said.

But the Journal du Dimanche said on Sunday that investigators checked the billing records for the portable phones of the photographers under investigation and were unable to find that any of them had tried to report the accident. Dr. Frederic Mailliez, a doctor who happened on the accident scene while on his way back from a private evening, said he reported the crash.

A Fayed family bodyguard in the car, Trevor Rees-Jones, a 29-year-old former British paratrooper, survived because he was wearing a seat belt. But prosecutors said he has been unable to talk to them because of severe injuries to his jaw.

Police did not respond to inquiries about the case on Sunday.

A spokeswoman for Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, where Diana was pronounced dead at about 4 a.m. last Sunday and where Rees-Jones is in intensive care, denied French press reports that his tongue had been torn out in the accident. “We have not had a proper discussion with him,” she said. The Observer, a British Sunday paper, said that he had told relatives at his bedside that he felt a sense of guilt.

The French criminal probe, which could last months, is being conducted by two investigating magistrates, Judge Marie-Christine Devidal and Judge Herve Stephan. The families of the dead driver and of Princess Diana are also civil parties to the proceedings, which entitles them access to court files and enables them to sue for damages in the event that anyone is charged and found guilty in a trial. Police are not disclosing information on their investigation to the public.

Lawyers said that the risk of any potential financial liability of the Ritz Hotel or the Fayed family in the case would be borne by their insurance companies.