Diana 'engagement' claim denied

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A jeweller invented stories about a ring chosen by Dodi Al Fayed hours before he and Princess Diana died in a Paris car crash, an inquest has heard.

Claude Roulet, a former employee of the Al Fayed family, said he had helped Mr Fayed select a ring from Alberto Repossi's shop in the French capital.

He disputed Mr Repossi's claims that the couple chose the ring together, and that it was an engagement ring.

He was speaking at a London hearing into the couple's deaths in 1997.

Mr Roulet - assistant to the president of the Ritz Hotel in Paris at the time of the crash - also told the inquest that he was told to "shut up" by his boss when he questioned the jeweller's version of events.

Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi's father, is the owner of the Paris Ritz, where the couple were staying at the time of the crash.

He has claimed that his son and the princess were about to announce their engagement, and that she was pregnant with his child. He has further alleged that the couple were targets of a conspiracy directed by the Duke of Edinburgh.

And he has disputed police conclusions that Henri Paul, the acting head of security at the Paris Ritz who was driving the couple's car at the time of the crash, was drunk.

'Romantic story'

Mr Roulet told the inquest: "I know that a few days after the accident, Mr Repossi started giving different accounts of the events and that his director of communications, Gilles Montrichard, advised him against making things up.

"This director had to leave his employ."

Mr Roulet said the choice of a ring from Mr Repossi's "Dis-moi Oui" ("Tell me Yes") range was a late decision, and that Dodi Al Fayed did not even look at it.

Henri Paul: "Drinking in a bar"He added that the ring was the cheapest of a group offered to Mr Al Fayed.

"As best as I can remember, it was a kind of romantic story that Dodi asked for an engagement ring and that they had to choose together the engagement ring, which was not the truth."

Mr Roulet, who left his job at the Ritz Hotel in 2004, said he had complained to the hotel president, Franz Klein, about Mr Repossi's claims.

"I remember I said to Mr Klein: 'But why he is lying?' and Mr Klein told me: 'Well shut up, it is not your matter.'"

Mr Roulet also told the inquest he had seen Mr Paul in a bar near the hotel on the night of the crash.

"As I was walking home via the Rue des Petits Champs, I saw Henri Paul in the Bar de Bourgogne.

"It was five or seven minutes away from the Ritz, he was on his own in the bar by the glass door which was open. He was drinking something, but I cannot say what it was."