Burrell: No Diana Perjury Probe

By Sky News SkyNews - Friday, May 9 06:00 pm

Paul Burrell will not face a police investigation over allegations of perjury relating to the Diana inquest.

Officers decided there was "insufficient admissible evidence" to prove such an offence had occurred, Scotland Yard said.

The former royal butler had come under a preliminary police inquiry after a newspaper reported he had admitted telling "red herrings" to the hearing.

But the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) said: "The MPS has reviewed the available evidence in relation to the perjury allegations made against Paul Burrell and sought the view of both the Crown Prosecution Service and (inquest coroner) Lord Justice Scott Baker.

"As a result we have reached the decision that there is insufficient admissible evidence to prove that an offence of perjury has occurred and therefore do not believe it to be appropriate to instigate a police investigation."

After giving evidence to the inquest in January, Mr Burrell returned to the US, but was secretly recorded in a New York hotel admitting he had not told the "whole truth" to the inquest.

The Sun newspaper reported the former butler's comments, which included the confession: "I was very naughty, and I laid a couple of red herrings."

The coroner subsequently demanded the ex-aide return to explain the discrepancy but he refused, sending a statement in which he claimed he had simply been drunk and showing off.

Lord Justice Scott Baker, in his summing-up to the jury, suggested Mr Burrell's behaviour had been "shabby".

He added: "You heard him in the witness box and, even without what he said subsequently in the hotel room in New York, it was blindingly obvious, wasn't it, that the evidence that he gave in this courtroom was not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"

The inquest jury later returned verdicts that Diana and her lover, Dodi Fayed, had been unlawfully killed by the paparazzi and driver Henri Paul.

After the hearing ended, the coroner, who once jailed disgraced Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken for perjury, made it clear that he had no plans to refer Mr Burrell to police.

But soon afterwards the police began considering whether the former butler should be "considered for perjury" after receiving an undisclosed complaint.

• Email Story
• IM Story
• Printable View
• Blog This
• Post a Comment

Recommend this article

Sponsored Links

(What’s this?)