Former bodyguard Trevor Rees, sole survivor of the Paris car crash that killed Princess Diana, denied today being part of a murder cover-up.
Mr Rees, still bearing scars from the crash that killed Diana, her lover Dodi al-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, wealthy businessman Mohamed al-Fayed, told 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The allegations against Rees, originally made to British police investigators by Mohamed al-Fayed, prompted a sharp rebuke from Lord Justice Scott Baker, the inquest judge.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 al-Fayed's lawyer Michael Mansfield.
Mohamed al-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.
Mr Fayed believes her killing was ordered because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king having a child with his son. He alleges that Diana's body was embalmed to cover up evidence she was expecting a baby.
Mr Rees, who suffered horrific facial injuries in the high-speed crash, told the court his last memory was of leaving the backdoor of the Ritz hotel, owned by al-Fayed, on that fateful August night in 1997.
Since then, he had two flashbacks - one of paparazzi on a motorbike drawing up beside the car and another of a woman's voice, presumably Diana, after the crash saying the name "Dodi".
"I remember having heard someone moaning and the name Dodi was uttered," the former paratrooper, who along with Paul was employed by al-Fayed at the time, told the court.
But even he admitted "These memories are vague and sometimes I myself doubt them."
Rees dismissed claims that Dodi and Diana had picked out an engagement ring in Monte Carlo the week before they died.
Asked if that had happened, Mr Rees said "No, it did not."
Much of the morning's testimony was spent by Mr Rees in the witness box meticulously reviewing CCTV images from the last night at the Ritz. Lawyer Ian Burnett hoped - but in vain - that it would jog his memory into new revelations.