Anger as Mohammed Fayed burns Harrods royal warrants
Mohamed Fayed burns the royal warrants that used to adorn Harrods in the final scene of a controversial documentary on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
As he looks on at the bonfire, he turns to the camera and brands the Duke of Edinburgh as a "Nazi". Even the film's makers admit the burning of the crests is likely to be viewed as "spiteful" .
Critics condemned the decision to film the burning of the Royal crests as malcicious and vengeful.
Hugo Vickers, the Royal historian and author, said: "It does seem vindictive and in very bad taste to burn the warrants but I suppose it's up to him. He was the shopkeeper."
The film, entitled Unlawful Killing, has already provoked outrage for including a sickening, close-up photograph of Princess Diana taken moments after the Mercedes she and Dodi Fayed were travelling in crashed in a Paris underpass.
At one stage in the documentary the Queen is labelled a "gangster in a tiara" while Prince Philip is described as a "Fred West-style psychopath".
The documentary, which was made with £2 million funding from Mr Fayed, will not be shown in the UK for legal reasons but receives its first public screening at a film festival in Ireland on July 6. Shown to distributors at a private viewing at the Cannes film festival in May, Unlawful Killing was roundly condemned as "ludicrous", "cynical" and "cruel".
Still images from the final scene, which have been obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, show Mr Fayed in the grounds of his country estate near Oxted in Surrey with the film's director Keith Allen, an actor, one-time comedian and father of the pop singer Lily Allen. Mr Fayed's son Dodi is buried nearby in a mausoleum.
With the warrants in flames behind him, Mr Fayed then addresses the camera directly, declaring: "I am destroying these royal crests as a tribute to my son Dodi. I feel that he is looking down on this today.
"There was a clear verdict of unlawful killing, so why has nobody been arrested? What is at the core of all this is racism.
"Powerful people in this country - my country - don't want to hear me talking about Prince Philip's Nazi background, but I have to, because it is 100 per cent true. They wouldn't accept me or my son, and when he fell in love with Diana, they murdered him."
Mr Vickers said it was completely untrue to suggest Prince Philip had "a Nazi background". The film ignores the Duke of Edinburgh's distinguished career in the Royal Navy during the Second World War.
Mr Vickers said: "It is a great pity that Mohammed Fayed persists in peddling these myths when the inquiry into Diana's death has proved all the allegations were complete nonsense.
"It is rather sad. I had seriously hoped he had given up on this after the inquest's final verdict."
An inquest in 2008 ruled Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed but blamed their deaths on their driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi.
Four Royal warrants were removed from Harrods in 2000. Reports had suggested the warrants were burned that year but it now appears Mr Fayed, who sold Harrods last year, kept them in storage.
The film's final scene was shot last year. It is not clear if all Harrods' warrants were put on the bonfire. Before princess Diana's death, the Knightsbridge store enjoyed the Royal seal of approval from not only The Queen and Prince Philip but also from the Queen Mother and the Prince of Wales.
Mr Allen said: "The images of the burning Royal Warrants, filmed next to Dodi Fayed's mausoleum, appear as the climax to my equally inflammatory film. This sequence will doubtless be interpreted by some as spiteful or vindictive. But it is not.
"Any spitefulness came from the Royal Family who, only weeks after the death of Dodi, ordered his father to take down the Royal Warrants from Harrods.
"The final sequence in the film shows him achieving a symbolic justice by burning the royal warrants."
2011-06-26
Anger as Mohammed Fayed burns Harrods royal warrants - Telegraph
via telegraph.co.uk
