Henri Paul

Vorlage:Otheruses4 Vorlage:CleanupHenri Paul (July 3, 1956 - August 31, 1997) was an employee of the Hôtel Ritz Paris and the chauffeur driving at the time of the automobile accident that killed him along with Diana, Princess of Wales, and her romantic interest Dodi Al-Fayed. Trevor Rees-Jones, Al-Fayed's bodyguard, survived (see details of the crash).

French police reported that Paul was under the influence of alcohol and trying to elude paparazzi journalists at a high speed when the S280 he was driving crashed into a column supporting the Alma Tunnel in Paris, France. Some controversy surrounds when, how, and even whether Paul might have consumed as much alcohol as the police suggest he did.Vorlage:Fact His blood alcohol content level was between 1.73 grams per litre to 1.75 grams per litre.

The Operation Paget inquiry by Lord Stevens, former head of the Metropolitan Police Service, into the events of August 31 noted that Paul had been off duty on the night in question, when he was summoned suddenly back by Dodi Al-Fayed who demanded that he drive. He would not, the inquiry concluded, have been expecting to be required to drive when he began to drink that evening. A search of his flat revealed no evidence of a heavy drinking habit.

Paul received a pilot's license in 1974. His annual pilot's physical examination three days before relied on pilots making a self-certification about alcohol problems. The original document Certificat D'Aptitude Physique et Mentale was shown in German-Television "ZDF" in 1998 (Diana - Geheimnisse der Todesnacht, ZDF 1998).

His employer, the Ritz Hotel, placed him on a two day advanced driver course by Mercedes-Benz in 1991.

Allegations were persistently made about Henri Paul in the years following his death concerning his fitness to drive on the night of the accident and his involvement with the French Security Services. The allegations were thoroughly investigated by the Metropolitan Police's Operation Paget team over the course of three years. Chapter four of their criminal invesitgation report is entirely given to the allegations about Henri Paul.

The conclusions of the investigation were that Paul's involvement with the Security Services was limited to low level co-operation when high profile guests stayed at the Ritz Hotel and he received no payment for this in line with French Government policy. It further noted such involvement with national security services is common among senior security staff at up market hotels in major world cities.

From interviews with his friends and family, it was also revealed that Paul had a very high tolerance for alcohol and was seen on social occasions to drink steadily for several hours while showing no obvious sign of intoxication.

His doctor testified that in the two years leading up to his death he had become depressed about the break-up of a long term relationship and had taken to drinking alone. She believed he was not alcohol dependent but he was worried that he may become so and she prescribed anti-depressant and anti-alcoholism medication for him. Traces of these substances were found in post-mortem examinations of his blood.

Operation Paget also investigated the reliability of the post-mortem investigations of his blood using DNA comparison of a sample taken from his body five days after his death with his mother's DNA profile. The test produced a result that there was maternal relationship between the two samples to a probability of 99.9997%. The high level of carbon monoxide in this blood sample and one taken on 31 August 1997 was attributed to his living in a built up urban area and his smoking of small cigars in the hours leading up to his death.

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