The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, London

A lawyer for the businessman who claims British agents arranged the death of Princess Diana suggested Friday that the agents were trying to scare her, not kill her. The remark was made by Michael Mansfield, a lawyer for Mohamed Al Fayed, at the inquest into the deaths of Diana and Al Fayed's son Dodi Fayed in a Paris car crash on Aug. 31, 1997. MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, denies any involvement in the deaths. Mansfield made his suggestion while questioning an MI6 witness, identified only as "E," who directed central and eastern European operations from 1992 to 1994. The public was not allowed in court this week for the testimony of agents whose identities were kept secret. "If an officer perceives a threat, t in other words identifies a potential threat in his area of work and then conceives of a way of nullifying the threat, which may stretch from the ultimate, in other words, annihilation, to nullification; in other words, you nullify not by killing, but by frightening, shocking or doing something else?" Mansfield asked.