Court Rejects Bid for Diana Records

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a lower court ruling denying Mohamed Al Fayed access to U.S. intelligence records related to the 1997 deaths of his son, Dodi Fayed, and Princess Diana in a Paris car crash.

The Egyptian-born tycoon, owner of Harrods department store in London, sued the CIA seeking documents he said included information from monitoring of Diana’s telephone conversations. National Security Agency officials acknowledged in 1998 picking up some references to her in its monitoring that were casual and incidental but maintained she was never a target of U.S. intelligence efforts.

Al Fayed contended the Aug. 31, 1997, deaths resulted from a murder conspiracy carried out by people who disapproved of Diana’s relationship with his son. A French magistrate found their driver, Henri Paul, who also died in the crash, wrecked the car because he was drunk.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia panel’s ruling hinged on whether a government agency could be defined as a “person.”