Princess Diana's death could have been STOPPED by security services, bodyguard claims

The sensational claims were was made by the Princess of Wales’s personal protection officer, Ken Wharfe, who blames her bodyguard at the time because he should have stopped her getting into the doomed Mercedes that led her to her death. 

Recalling the moment he discovered Diana had been killed in a tragic crash in Paris, he said: “There have been times, since I left Diana’s side in 1993, when I have questioned whether I was right to resign. 

“This awful moment was the most poignant. The Princess, whom I had guarded for so many years, lay dead in a Paris hospital.”

Mr Wharfe was in charge of the princess' around-the-clock security between 1987 and 1993 before he retired. 

Writing in his re-released memoir, Diana: Close Guarded Secret, Mr Wharf reveals he still holds a grudge against the security services that let her get in a car driven by a drunk driver. 

Diana was in Paris with her lover Dodi Fayed who was also killed in the tragic smash, alongside their driver Henri Paul. 

He said: “I am still angry beyond words that this team of ‘bodyguards’ let her come to harm. 

"Our department had the care of her personal safety for some 15 years: Fayed’s crew were in charge of her security for just eight weeks before she died."

The sole survivor of the crash is bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who Mr Wharf says hadn’t received “the training necessary to protect a member of the Royal Family”. 

He writes: “Rees-Jones was a former soldier who had not received the training necessary to protect a member of the Royal Family. When he first heard he’d been appointed by the Fayed family to guard Diana in France, he could have informally contacted Scotland Yard for a briefing.

“Instead, according to his memoirs, he simply reflected that he was in for ‘a hell of an interesting trip’.

"Worryingly, he also bragged he was a ‘good bloke in a fight’.That raises serious questions about his suitability. 

"The ability to acquit oneself well in a brawl is not qualification enough to protect someone like Diana.” Mr Wharf also claims that the driver Paul was most certainly drunk and should have been stopped. 

He said: "If any Metropolitan Police protection officer had been with her, Diana would never have got into a car with a drunk driver: not only experience but common sense would not allow it. 

“The Princess, like most of the Royal Family, accepted her police protection officers as a fact of life - though she had little idea of the training required to do the job effectively.”

He added: "As the Mercedes pulled away from the Ritz, Paul is said to have leaned out of the window to issue a ‘catch us if you can’ challenge to the waiting paparazzi. It was not the act of a sober driver.

“It is clear that the bodyguard was alarmed at Paul’s driving before the accident, for he tried to put on his seat belt. He failed to buckle it in time - what saved his life was the air bag.”

Brushing off conspiracy theories that have clouded Diana’s death, including assassination claims, Mr Wharf insists it “was not a murder but a dreadful accident that should have been avoided”. 

He went on: She was not the victim of shadowy figures who regarded her as an embarrassment to the Establishment, but of her boyfriend’s erratic behaviour and her bodyguard’s mistakes.

“The first mistake was to use a bodyguard hired by the Fayed family, who was unable to say no to his employers. Dodi ordered Henri Paul to drive that night: the bodyguard should have stepped in, and refused to allow Diana into the car.