I, Richard John
Charles Tomlinson, former MI6 officer, of Geneva,
Switzerland hereby declare:
1.I firmly
believe that there exist documents held by the British
Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) that would yield
important new evidence into the cause and circumstances
leading to the deaths of the Princess of Wales, Mr Dodi
Al Fayed, and M. Henri Paul in Paris in August 1997.
2.I was
employed by MI6 between September 1991 and April 1995.
During that time, I saw various documents that I believe
would provide new evidence and new leads into the
investigation into these deaths. I also heard various
rumours - which though I was not able to see supporting
documents - I am confident were based on solid fact.
3. In 1992,
I was working in the Eastern European Controllerate
(Division) of MI6 and I was peripherally involved in a
large and complicated operation to smuggle advanced
Soviet weaponry out of the then disintegrating and
disorganised remnants of the Soviet Union. During 1992, I
spent several days reading the substantial files on this
operation. These files contain a wide miscellany of
contact notes, telegrams, intelligence reports,
photographs etc, from which it was possible to build up a
detailed understanding of the operation. The operation
involved a large cast of officers and agents of MI6. One
more than one occasion, meetings between various figures
in the operation took place at the Ritz Hotel, Place de
Vendome, Paris. There were in the file several
intelligence reports on these meetings, which had been
written by one of the MI6 officers based in Paris at the
time (identified in the file only by a coded
designation). The source of the information was an
informant in the Ritz Hotel, who again was identified in
the files only by a code number. The MI6 officer paid the
informant in cash for his information. I became curious
to learn more about the identity of this particular
informant, because his number cropped up several times
and he seemed to have extremely good access to the goings
on in the Ritz Hotel. I therefore ordered this
informant's personal file from MI6's central file
registry. When I read this new file, I was not at all
surprised to learn that the informant was a security
officer of the Ritz Hotel. Intelligence services always
target the security officer's of important hotels because
they have such good access to intelligence. I remember,
however, being mildly surprised that the nationality of
this informant was French, and this stuck in my memory,
because it is rare that MI6 succeeds in recruiting a
French informer. I cannot claim that I remember from this
reading of the file that the name of this person was
Henri Paul, but I have no doubt with the benefit of
hindsight that this was he. Although I did not
subsequently come across Henri Paul again during my time
in MI6, I am confident that the relationship between he
and MI6 would have continued until his death, because MI6
would never willingly relinquish control over such a well
placed informant. I am sure that the personal file of
Henri Paul will therefore contain notes of meetings
between him and his MI6 controlling officer right up
until the point of his death. I firmly believe that these
files will contain evidence of crucial importance to the
circumstances and causes of the incident that killed M.
Paul, together with the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al
Fayed.
4. The most
senior undeclared officer in the local MI6 station would
normally control an informant of M. Paul's usefulness and
seniority. Officers declared to the local
counter-intelligence service (in this case the
Directorate de Surveillance Territoire, or DST) would not
be used to control such an informant, because it might
lead to the identity of the informant becoming known to
the local intelligence services. In Paris at the time of
M. Paul's death, there were two relatively experienced
but undeclared MI6 officers. The first was X. The second
was Y. I firmly believe that either one or both of these
officers will be well acquainted with M Paul, and most
probably also met M. Paul shortly before his death. I
believe that either or both of these officers will have
knowledge that will be of crucial importance in
establishing the sequence of events leading up to the
deaths of M. Paul, Dodi Al Fayed and the Princess of
Wales. Y in particular was an extremely well connected
and influential officer, because he had been, prior to
his appointment in Paris, the personal secretary to the
Chief of MI6 Mr David SPEDDING. As such, he would have
been privy to even the most confidential of MI6
operations. I believe that there may well be significance
in the fact that Y was posted to Paris in the month
immediately before the deaths.
5. Later in
1992, as the civil war in the former Yugoslavia became
increasingly topical, I started to work primarily on
operations in Serbia. During this time, I became
acquainted with A, born 1958, the MI6 officer who at the
time was in charge of planning Balkan operations. During
one meeting with A, he casually showed to me a three-page
document that on closer inspection turned out to be an
outline plan to assassinate the Serbian leader President
Slobodan Milosevic. The plan was fully typed, and
attached to a yellow "minute board", signifying that this
was a formal and accountable document. It will therefore
still be in existence. Fishwick had annotated that the
document be circulated to the following senior MI6
officers: B, then head of Balkan operations, C, then the
security officer for Balkan operations, the SAS liaison
officer to MI6 (designation MODA/SO, but I have forgotten
his name), the head of the Eastern European Controllerate
(then D) and finally E, the personal secretary to the
then Chief of MI6, Colin McCOLL. This plan contained a
political justification for the assassination of
Milosevic, followed by three outline proposals on how to
achieve this objective. I firmly believe that the third
of these scenarios contained information that could be
useful in establishing the causes of death of Henri Paul,
the Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al Fayed. This third
scenario suggested that Milosevic could be assassinated
by causing his personal limousine to crash. A proposed to
arrange the crash in a tunnel, because the proximity of
concrete close to the road would ensure that the crash
would be sufficiently violent to cause death or serious
injury, and would also reduce the possibility that there
might be independent, casual witnesses. A suggested that
one way to cause the crash might be to disorientate the
chauffeur using a strobe flash gun, a device which is
occasionally deployed by special forces to, for example,
disorientate helicopter pilots or terrorists, and about
which MI6 officers are briefed about during their
training. In short, this scenario bore remarkable
similarities to the circumstances and witness accounts of
the crash that killed the Princess of Wales, Dodi Al
Fayed, and Henri Paul. I firmly believe that this
document should be yielded by MI6 to the Judge
investigating these deaths, and would provide further
leads that he could follow.
6. During
my service in MI6, I also learnt unofficially and
second-hand something of the links between MI6 and the
Royal Household. MI6 are frequently and routinely asked
by the Royal Household (usually via the Foreign Office)
to provide intelligence on potential threats to members
of the Royal Family whilst on overseas trips. This
service would frequently extend to asking friendly
intelligence services (such as the CIA) to place members
of the Royal Family under discrete surveillance,
ostensibly for their own protection. This was
particularly the case for the Princess of Wales, who
often insisted on doing without overt personal
protection, even on overseas trips. Although contact
between MI6 and the Royal Household was officially only
via the Foreign Office, I learnt while in MI6 that there
was unofficial direct contact between certain senior and
influential MI6 officers and senior members of the Royal
Household. I did not see any official papers on this
subject, but I am confident that the information is
correct. I firmly believe that MI6 documents would yield
substantial leads on the nature of their links with the
Royal Household, and would yield vital information about
MI6 surveillance on the Princess of Wales in the days
leading to her death.
7.I also
learnt while in MI6 that one of the "paparazzi"
photographers who routinely followed the Princess of
Wales was a member of "UKN", a small corps of part-time
MI6 agents who provide miscellaneous services to MI6 such
as surveillance and photography expertise. I do not know
the identity of this photographer, or whether he was one
of the photographers present at the time of the fatal
incident. However, I am confident that examination of UKN
records would yield the identity of this photographer,
and would enable the inquest to eliminate or further
investigate that potential line of inquiry.
8. On
Friday August 28 1998, I gave much of this information to
Judge Hervé Stephan, the French investigative
Judge in charge of the inquest into the accident. The
lengths which MI6, the CIA and the DST have taken to
deter me giving this evidence and subsequently to stop me
talking about it, suggests that they have something to
hide.
9. On
Friday 31 July 1998, shortly before my appointment with
Judge Hervé Stephan, the DST arrested me in my
Paris hotel room. Although I have no record of violent
conduct I was arrested with such ferocity and at gunpoint
that I received a broken rib. I was taken to the
headquarters of the DST, and interrogated for 38 hours.
Despite my repeated requests, I was never given any
justification for the arrest and was not shown the arrest
warrant. Even though I was released without charge, the
DST confiscated from me my laptop computer and Psion
organiser. They illegally gave these to MI6 who took them
back to the UK. They were not returned for six months,
which is illegal and caused me great inconvenience and
financial cost.
10. On
Friday 7th August 1998 I boarded a Qantas flight at
Auckland International airport, New Zealand, for a flight
to Sydney, Australia where I was due to give a television
interview to the Australian Channel Nine television
company. I was in my seat, awaiting take off, when an
official boarded the plane and told me to get off. At the
airbridge, he told me that the airline had received a fax
"from Canberra" saying that there was a problem with my
travel papers. I immediately asked to see the fax, but I
was told that "it was not possible". I believe that this
is because it didn't exist. This action was a ploy to
keep me in New Zealand so that the New Zealand police
could take further action against me. I had been back in
my Auckland hotel room for about half an hour when the
New Zealand police and NZSIS, the New Zealand Secret
Intelligence Service, raided me. After being detained and
searched for about three hours, they eventually
confiscated from me all my remaining computer equipment
that the French DST had not succeeded in taking from me.
Again, I didn't get some of these items back until six
months later.
11.
Moreover, shortly after I had given this
evidence to Judge Stephan, I was invited to talk about
this evidence in a live television interview on America's
NBC television channel. I flew from Geneva to JFK airport
on Sunday 30 August to give the interview in New York on
the following Monday morning. Shortly after arrival at
John F Kennedy airport, the captain of the Swiss Air
flight told all passengers to return to their seats. Four
US Immigration authority officers entered the plane, came
straight to my seat, asked for my passport as identity,
and then frogmarched me off the plane. I was taken to the
immigration detention centre, photographed,
fingerprinted, manacled by my ankle to a chair for seven
hours, served with deportation papers (exhibit 1) and
then returned on the next available plane to Geneva. I
was not allowed to make any telephone calls to the
representatives of NBC awaiting me in the airport. The US
Immigration Officers - who were all openly sympathetic to
my situation and apologised for treating me so badly -
openly admitted that they were acting under instructions
from the CIA.
12. In
January of this year, I booked a chalet in the village of
Samoens in the French Alps for a ten day snowboarding
holiday with my parents. I picked up my parents from
Geneva airport in a hire car on the evening of January 8,
and set off for the French border. At the French customs
post, our car was stopped and I was detained. Four
officers from the DST held me for four hours. At the end
of this interview, I was served with the deportation
papers below (exhibit 2), and ordered to return to
Switzerland. Note that in the papers, my supposed
destination has been changed from "Chamonix" to
"Samoens". This is because when first questioned by a
junior DST officer, I told him that my destination was
"Chamonix". When a senior officer arrived an hour or so
later, he crossed out the word and changed it to
"Samoens", without ever even asking or confirming this
with me. I believe this is because MI6 had told them of
my true destination, having learnt the information
through surveillance on my parent's telephone in the UK.
My banning from France is entirely illegal under European
law. I have a British passport and am entitled to travel
freely within the European Union. MI6 have "done a deal"
with the DST to have me banned, and have not used any
recognised legal mechanism to deny my rights to freedom
of travel. I believe that the DST and MI6 have banned me
from France because they wanted to prevent me from giving
further evidence to Judge Stephan's inquest, which at the
time, I was planning to do.
13.
Whatever MI6's role in the events leading to
the death of the Princess of Wales, Dodi Al Fayed and
Henri Paul, I am absolutely certain that there is
substantial evidence in their files that would provide
crucial evidence in establishing the exact causes of this
tragedy. I believe that they have gone to considerable
lengths to obstruct the course of justice by interfering
with my freedom of speech and travel, and this in my view
confirms my belief that they have something to hide. I
believe that the protection given to MI6 files under the
Official Secrets Act should be set aside in the public
interest in uncovering once and for all the truth behind
these dramatic and historically momentous events.
Richard Tomlinson, 12th
May 1999
This version can also be
on Mohamed Al Fayed's website.
