Daughter of Iran's late Shah buried in Paris

The youngest daughter of the late Shah of Iran, found dead in a London hotel room last weekend, was buried in the Passy Cemetery in Paris yesterday. The flower-laden coffin of Princess Leila Pahlavi, 31, was driven through the black iron gates of the large cemetery on the Place Trocadero at 3pm amid a modest crowd of mourners and onlookers.

Her mother, the former empress Farah, was dressed in black and walked behind the hearse.

The princess was found dead on Sunday in a west London hotel after suffering what her mother said was a long period of depression. An autopsy failed to determine the cause of death, and the results of further tests were not expected for several weeks, the family said. Newspapers speculated that the princess had committed suicide.

Scotland Yard said it had launched an investigation into her death. Farah, the Shah's third wife and mother to four of his five children, said Leila had been unhappy living far from Iran.

The youngest of the Shah's children, the princess split her time between Connecticut in the United States, her mother's flat in Paris and the Leonard Hotel in London, where her body was found.

The Shah and his family fled Iran in January 1979 in the face of the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The former Iranian ruler died in 1980 in Egypt. Farah said her daughter never forgot the "injustice and the dramatic conditions of her departure" from her homeland.