London, Jan 25: Princess Diana believed that Prince Philip was angry at her as her marriage to Prince Charles disintegrated, her former private secretary testified on Friday.
Patrick Jephson, Diana`s private secretary from 1990 until January 1996, also told a Coroner`s inquest hat he had warned her that telephone conversations might be monitored by the security services or others, but that he had no evidence to support the suspicion.
The bodyguard who survived the crash in 1997 that killed Diana, boyfriend Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul, insisted in more testimony on Friday that he had confronted Fayed about the plan to try to sneak out of the back entrance of the Ritz Hotel in Paris on the night of the crash.
Fayed`s father, Mohamed al Fayed, has accused Prince Philip of directing a plot involving British security agents that resulted in the couple`s death on August 31, 1997.
"It is fair to say that she felt he (Prince Philip) was angry with her," Jephson said of the period around 1992 and 1993.
Jephson said he had seen some of Philip`s letters to Diana, describing them as "well-intentioned," but that she "appeared to register only what she chose to hear as their
unsympathetic tone." He said that astrologers and soothsayers had "fed the paranoia that never lurked far below her surface."
In a book published in 2000, Jephson wrote that by late 1995 Diana`s "paranoia had reached new heights, she saw plots everywhere, and honestly told me that her car’ brakelines had been cut. Looking me straight in the eye, she told me that someone had taken a `pot` at her with a gun in Hyde Park."
Bureau Report
