Bringing the curtains down on the six-month-long inquest into the death Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed, the coroner today said there is “not a shred of evidence” that Prince Philip and the British secret service murdered them, a charge levied by Dodi’s father.

At the opening of his summing up to the jury, Lord Justice Scott Baker, who led the much media-anticipated inquest, said many of Harrod’s Boss Mohamed al Fayed’s conspiracy theories about the crash were “so demonstrably without foundation” that even his lawyer was no longer pursuing them.

“There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip) ordered Diana’s execution and there is no evidence that the secret intelligence service or any other Government agency organised it,” Lord Baker said. Al Fayed, who has always maintained that his son Dodi and Diana were murdered by the British secret service on orders of Prince Philip, termed the coroner’s statement as “biased”. Dodi and Diana, alongwith their driver Henri Paul had died in a car accident in Alma tunnel in Paris in 1997.

“Various propositions were being asserted, have been shown to be so demonstrably without foundation that they are no longer being pursued by Mohamed al Fayed's lawyer, even if he still continues to believe in their truth in his own mind,” the coroner said in his statement.

“They are not being pursued because there is not a shred of evidence to support them. Foremost among them is the proposition that Diana was assassinated by the secret intelligence service (MI6) on the orders of the Duke of Edinburgh.” The coroner determining that it was not open for Al Fayed “to find that this was unlawful killing by the Duke of Edinburgh or anyone else in a staged accident,” gave the jury five verdicts to consider, including an open verdict.

It could also be decided that Diana and Dodi's deaths were an accident and lastly an open verdict if none of the other possibilities are found to be established, Lord Baker told the jury.