LONDON, Feb 18: Princess Diana voiced concern before her death that senior British royals, including her ex-husband Prince Charles and Prince Philip, wanted to “get rid” of her, her boyfriend’s father said on Monday.

Testifying for the first time at the coroner’s inquest in London into the couple’s 1997 death, Mohamed Al Fayed described Queen Elizabeth II’s husband Prince Philip as a “Nazi” and a “racist”.

“It’s time to send him back to Germany from where he comes,” he said at the High Court “You want to know his original name? It ends with Frankenstein,” he added.

The monarch’s husband was born Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark in Corfu and educated in England, Germany and Scotland. He renounced his Greek and Danish titles and converted to Anglicanism on marrying the queen in 1947.

Al Fayed said he would “make no allegations” during his evidence but simply state his belief that the couple were murdered. “She told me that she knew Prince Philip and Prince Charles were trying to get rid of her,” he added.

The inquest into Diana and Dodi Fayed’s death in a Paris car crash started last October and was expected to last six months. It has heard from a huge number of witnesses, as well as royal aides.

Al Fayed, owner of the upmarket London department store Harrods, claims that a plot was behind the couple’s death in the Alma road tunnel on the night of August 30, 1997, to avoid embarrassing the royals by Diana marrying a Muslim.

In court on Monday he reiterated his claim that Diana was pregnant and that she and Dodi were about to announce their engagement.

“Diana told me on the telephone that she was pregnant. I’m the only person they told,” he said. “They told me they were engaged and would announce their engagement on Monday morning.

“She would speak to her sons when she returned from Paris.” Asked to provide evidence, he said: “You want me to get the proof but I am facing a steel wall from the security services. I have been fighting for 10 years to be where we are.” He renewed a claim that blood tests showing driver Henri Paul to be over the drink-drive limit had been falsified, and that a paparazzi photographer had caused the crash by ramming their car with a white Fiat.

“The blood had been taken from someone in the mortuary who had been breathing carbon monoxide by the pathologist who refused to appear because they know their arguments are false and it’s baloney and it’s not facts,” he said.

“There was one paparazzi member in the pay of the security services... who exacted the murder in his own Fiat, pushed the car and a strobe light having been used to blind (chauffeur) Henri Paul,” he said. The photographer, James Andanson, had since died in suspicious circumstances, he said.

But doubts about this theory have been repeatedly raised, including by Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, who said it was “impossible” that she was murdered on the orders of the royal family.

That view was also voiced by former Scotland Yard police chief Lord John Stevens, who headed an inquiry which in December 2006 concluded that the crash was a “tragic accident” caused by Paul driving at excessive speed while drunk.—AFP