BRITAIN:Former bodyguard Trevor Rees, sole survivor of the Paris car crash that killed Princess Diana, denied yesterday being part of a murder cover-up.
The soft-spoken Mr Rees, still bearing scars from the crash that killed Diana, Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul, said: "I am not part of any conspiracy to suppress the truth."
Lawyer Ian Burnett, outlining accusations made by Dodi's father, businessman Mohamed al-Fayed, told Mr Rees he was accused of being part of a conspiracy to "suppress the truth" that they had been murdered by British security services.
"All I have ever done is give the truth as I see it," Mr Rees told the inquest into the deaths of Diana and Dodi.
The allegations against Mr Rees, originally made to British police investigators by Mr Fayed, prompted a sharp rebuke from Lord Justice Scott Baker, the inquest judge.
"They are very grave allegations and one would have thought a man with any decency who is not going to pursue them would withdraw them," he told Mr Fayed's lawyer Michael Mansfield.
Mr Fayed alleges that his son and Diana were killed by British agents on the orders of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband and Diana's former father-in-law.
He believes her killing was ordered because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king having a child with his son.
Mr Rees, who suffered horrific facial injuries and memory loss in the high-speed crash, told the court his last memory was of leaving the backdoor of the Ritz hotel, owned by Mohamed al-Fayed, on that fateful August night in 1997. Since then, he had had two flashbacks - one of paparazzi on a motorbike drawing up beside the car and another of a woman's voice, presumably Diana's, after the crash saying the name "Dodi".
"These memories are vague and sometimes I myself doubt them."
The former paratrooper turned bodyguard dismissed claims that Dodi and Diana had picked out an engagement ring in Monte Carlo the week before they died.