Britain:One of the first witnesses on the scene of Princess Diana's fatal car crash in Paris told an inquest yesterday he hastily reversed his own car from the tunnel for fear he could have stumbled into a terrorist attack.
Antonio Lopes-Borges, a Portuguese national living in France, described how he arrived in his car at the Alma road tunnel just after the high-speed crash on August 31st, 1997.
Giving evidence by video link from Paris, he said he saw the buckled Mercedes in the tunnel and was asked to stop by a man who told him to reverse as the car was going to explode.
"As we had already had terrorist attacks in Paris, I thought it could be a terrorist attack, and I believed we could have an explosion there," he told the jurors, who flew to the French capital earlier this week to see the crash scene for themselves.
Mr Lopes-Borges, whose answers had to be translated in a laborious cross-channel exchange with the Old Bailey Court in London, said he saw one photographer and then another taking pictures of the crash scene. The paparazzi did not attempt to help any of the victims, he said.
The witness told the inquest into the deaths of Diana and her lover, Dodi al-Fayed, that earlier he had seen a "big German car" at traffic lights in the Place de la Concorde in central Paris.
Several other cars sped off at the same time, including a 4x4 that nearly hit his own car.
Diana (36), al-Fayed (42) and driver Henri Paul died after their limousine crashed in the road tunnel as they sped away from the Ritz Hotel in Paris, pursued by paparazzi.
- (Reuters)