'MI6 strobe gun caused Diana crash'

London: A renegade spy told the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales that she could have been murdered by MI6 officers using a strobe gun to blind her driver.

Richard Tomlinson said he realised his former colleagues at the Secret Intelligence Service may have been responsible when he saw a documentary alleging that there had been a bright flash before the Princess's car crashed in a Paris underpass.

He remembered an MI6 training session in which he was shown a portable strobe light intended temporarily to blind targets in vehicles.

Tomlinson said he had also seen an MI6 document in 1992 detailing a plan to murder Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb leader, by flashing a strobe light at his chauffeur as he entered a tunnel in Geneva.

It bore an "alarming and very eerie similarity" to the crash which killed the princess, he said. He told the inquest that "A" was a "very ambitious and diligent" MI6 section sub-head in his early 30s. He is referred to as "Fish" in Lord Stevens's police inquiry into the crash.

Tomlinson said "A" showed him the plan in his office on the 11th floor of Century House, which was then the headquarters of MI6. The document gave a justification for murdering Milosevic because of his plans for a greater Serbia, a feared genocide of Albanians in Kosovo and his support for Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader.

The circulation list for the plan included the private secretary to the head of MI6. "There was no doubt in my mind that A was entirely serious about his plan," Tomlinson said. "He was an ambitious and serious officer who would not risk his career by making such a proposal in jest."