Free Republic

Mohamed Al Fayed, the Egyptian-born businessman who owned the department store Harrods, has died aged 94. His death comes almost 26 years to the day after the car crash in Paris that killed his eldest son, Dodi, and Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 August 1997. Fayed was born in Alexandria and was the son of a schoolteacher. In his homeland, he launched his own shipping business, before becoming an adviser to one of the world’s richest men, the Sultan of Brunei, in 1966. When he arrived in the UK in the 1970s, he joined the board of the mining...

One of the most influential Arab journalists in the world, Jamal Khashoggi, went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week. Turkish authorities have blamed the Saudis, but Riyadh has denied harming the veteran reporter.Jamal Khashoggi, 59, was born in Medina, Saudi Arabia, one of the holiest cities in Islam. Like many Saudis at the time, Khashoggi left to study abroad. He earned a business administration degree in 1983 at Indiana State University in the United States.Career in journalismKhashoggi began his career as a reporter for the English language newspaper Saudi Gazette. He went on to work for...

Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi middleman-for-hire who amas­sed huge wealth and influence peddling everything from American weapons to favors for Riyadh’s rulers and CIA spymasters, only to see his fortunes collapse amid the Iran-contra affair and other scandals, died June 6 at a hospital in London. He was 81, by most accounts. The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, the family said in a statement reported by the Associated Press. Mr. Khashoggi’s name may have lost its luster since his peak in the 1970s and 1980s, but not so the list of misdeeds and abuses that remain defining events of the...

Last week, a London court began pondering the vexed question of whether Diana, Princess of Wales, was, ahem, murdered. There was so much public suspicion, declared the coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, that it was time for the rumors to be either "dispelled or substantiated." So who killed her? On the night of Diana's death in 1997, there were apparently two top agents for MI6, the British secret service, on the loose in Paris, and possibly a third, if you believe that Henri Paul, the chauffeur, was also on the spooks' payroll. That's the theory of Mohammed Fayed, Monsieur Paul's...

DI INQUEST TO GO AHEAD  Aug 29 2003   EXCLUSIVE   By Justine Smith The Mirror  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13345429_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-DI%2DINQUEST%2DTO%2DGO%2DAHEAD-name_page.htmlAN inquest into the tragic car crash that killed Princess Diana is finally to be held in Britain, six years after she died. Surrey coroner Michael Burgess will announce the date in the next few days. The £1million inquest - into the death of Diana's lover Dodi Fayed - may at last give answers to how and why the princess died in the 1997 Paris car crash. __________ THE date for an inquest in Britain which could finally solve the mystery of the car...