Diana Would Still Be Alive Today With 'My Officers' Protecting Her—Ex Cop

The former head of royal security during the 1990s recently said that Princess Diana would not have died if his police officers had been with her during her last trip to Paris in 1997.

The comments made by Dai Davies, who was appointed Operational Unit Commander in charge of Royal Protection for Queen Elizabeth II and her family in 1995, come on the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana's death on Wednesday.

Speaking to GB News morning show hosts Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, Davies called Diana an "amazing woman" that he worked with over the last two years of her life.

"Where has 25 years gone?" he said. "I had the privilege and pleasure of knowing Princess Diana, an amazing woman."

"I don't think in my lifetime I can think of any other woman who has such international fame and I'm delighted in one sense that we are commemorating her, because her good points far outweighed anything derogatory that some people might say," Davies said.

In the years leading up to her death, the princess faced ever increasing press intrusion and criticism which followed her around the world.

After her formal separation from Prince Charles in 1992, Diana restructured her staff, replacing some who she reportedly felt could have been reporting her actions to other royal households. Charles and Diana divorced in 1996.

At some point before 1997, the princess dispensed with her royal protection officers and when she visited France in August with her then-boyfriend Dodi Fayed, it was the private security team hired by Fayed's billionaire father Mohamed Al-Fayed, the then-owner of Harrods, who accompanied the couple.

The Fayed-employed security team that worked with Dodi and Diana on their last visit to Paris included British bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who was traveling with the couple when their car crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in the early hours of August 31, 1997.

An inquest later found that the driver of the car had exceeded the legal blood alcohol limit to drive, was driving over the speed limit and that the car was being dangerously pursued by members of the paparazzi. Neither the driver nor the passengers were wearing seatbelts.

Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul, the car's driver, were pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Diana was transferred to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital where attempts to save her life were unsuccessful. Rees-Jones was the sole survivor of the crash.

"There are many thoughts that go through my head as we approach the anniversary," Davies said. "The first one is that if my officers had been looking after her in Paris, this would never ever have happened."

"It's a tragedy. It is an accident," he added, "and I've lectured and investigated all the events that happened in Paris."

"I have to say it would never have happened if seatbelts had been worn. I'm pleased, hopefully now that the nonsense of the conspiracy issues have, I hope, been put to bed."

Following a French inquest into the events surrounding the princess' death, a second more in-depth legal investigation was staged in Britain during the early 2000s after a number of conspiracy theories arose suggesting that there had been foul play.

These theories included unfounded claims that Prince Philip had been behind the car accident and that Diana was pregnant and about to announce her engagement.

An in-depth investigation headed by Lord John Stevens known as Operation Paget explored each of these claims and presented their findings to a judge who ruled in 2008 that Diana had been unlawfully killed owing to the "grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles [the paparazzi] and of the Mercedes driver Henri Paul."

None of the conspiracy theories presented were found to have sufficient grounds to impact the verdict.

When Davies joined the royal protection team in 1995, he recounted his first meeting with Diana which came in the same year that she recorded her landmark BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir.

"I remember her saying to me when I first took command back in the mid 90s, 'you poor man, do you know what you've taken on?'" He told GB News.

"And I can honestly say, having been a street cop most of my life, that when I went into this particular role, I simply did not know I was walking into a civil war. A civil war, it really was, between her husband and herself."

Though there have been no formal plans by members of the royal family to mark the 25th anniversary of Diana's death, in a recent speech at a polo event Prince Harry spoke of his wish for the day to be filled with "memories" of his mother.