One of the first witnesses on the scene of Princess Diana's fatal car crash told an inquest today 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.
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, who had been visiting his brother in central Paris, 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.
Under British law, an inquest is needed to determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.
Major investigations by French and British police have concluded the deaths were a accident caused by an inebriated Paul driving too fast.
They both have rejected the conspiracy theories of Dodi's father Mohamed al-Fayed who alleges the couple were engaged and that Diana was pregnant.
He claims they were killed by British security services acting on the orders of Queen Elizabeth's husband, Diana's former father-in-law.
At last week's dramatic opening to the long-delayed inquest, the jury was shown security camera pictures that pieced together the ill-fated couple's last day amid the luxury of the Ritz hotel