Al Fayed wins Diana legal challenge

LONDON, March 2 (Reuters) The father of Princess Diana's lover won a significant legal battle today when the High Court decided that the inquest into their deaths in a Paris car crash 10 years ago should be heard by a jury.

Mohamed al Fayed, who is convinced his son and Diana were murdered, had sought to overturn a ruling by Britain's former top woman judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to handle the official inquiries on her own.

Three senior judges ordered that the coroner hearing the inquest ''shall do so sitting with a jury''.

Speaking to reporters outside the court, Fayed said: ''We want to be sure that the jury are an independent jury.'' He said he hoped Diana's ex-husband Prince Charles and ex-father-in-law Prince Philip would be called as witnesses.

A three-year British police investigation ruled at the end of last year that the crash was an accident and not part of an elaborate murder plot as Fayed claims.

Diana's children, Princes William and Harry, had expressed the hope that the long-awaited inquest would be ''open, fair and transparent'' and completed as fast as possible.

Diana, 36, Fayed's son Dodi, 42, and their chauffeur Henri Paul were killed when their Mercedes limousine smashed at high speed into a pillar in a Paris road tunnel as they sped away from the Ritz Hotel, pursued by paparazzi on motorbikes.

The British inquiry backed a French probe which concluded that the driver was to blame because he was drunk, under the influence of anti-depressants and driving too fast.

Under British law an inquest is needed to formally determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.

REUTERS SP ND1756