Mr Trevor Rees-Jones, sole survivor of the car crash that killed Princess Diana, could recall nothing significant about the accident yesterday during a third meeting with French investigators.
Sources close to the probe confirmed that Mr Rees-Jones (29) had been able to add little to his previous accounts, in which he remembered nothing beyond leaving the Ritz hotel where Diana and her companion, Dodi Fayed, had dined late on August 30th.
The two-hour interview was conducted in the presence of Mr Rees-Jones's lawyer and an interpreter. "He still can't remember a thing about the accident," a legal source said. Mr Rees-Jones left the intensive care section of a Paris hospital on October 3rd to recuperate in Wales.
Wearing blue jeans and a tan jacket, Mr Rees-Jones looked unsteady and stumbled twice as he arrived at the Palais de Justice, in central Paris, where several dozen journalists and TV crews had been waiting since early morning.
The 24 police officers working on the case are also still searching for another car, probably a white Fiat Uno, that they believe the princess's Mercedes sideswiped before losing control. Meanwhile, friends and advisers to Diana in London challenged the authenticity of an interview, allegedly the last she gave, published this week by the French weekly Paris Match.
The magazine quoted Diana as saying: "My feelings for Dodi are deep and I believe his are sincere."
Mr Richard Kay, a Daily Mail columnist and a confidant of the princess, said: "If these really were her words, this wasn't the Diana I knew."
The princess's former private secretary, Mr Michael Gibbins, said: "We seriously doubt the authenticity of this interview." But a spokesman for the Al-Fayed family said yesterday: "We can confirm that this interview did happen at the end of their holiday, their very last holiday together."