On Friday, it was announced that Mohamed Al Fayed, the father of Dodi Al Fayed, who was dating Princess Diana when the two were killed while being pursued by paparazzi in 1997, passed away at the age of 94.
“On behalf of everyone at Fulham Football Club, I send my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Mohamed Al Fayed upon the news of his passing at age 94,” Shahid Khan, Al Fayed’s successor as owner, said in a statement on the club’s website. “I join our supporters around the world in celebrating the memory of Mohamed Al Fayed, whose legacy will always be at the heart of our tradition at Fulham Football Club.”
Al Fayed was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1929 and moved to the U.K. in the 1960s. He had also worked as an adviser to the sultan of Brunei and founded his own shipping company, Genevaco.
The Egyptian billionaire previously owned famed London department store Harrods and the Ritz Hotel in Paris where his son and Princess Diana dined before their fatal car crash on the night of August 31, 1997.
Al Fayed’s death came just one day after the 26th anniversary of his son’s death, the cause of which he frequently contested throughout the later years of his life, alleging it wasn’t an accident but rather a conspiracy.
Al Fayed initiated his own investigation into the crash based on those beliefs and claimed at one point that the royal family had wanted to “get rid” of Diana and accused the British security services of orchestrating her death.
Al Fayed had also claimed that Diana was pregnant and planning to marry Dodi and that the royal family could not countenance the princess marrying a Muslim.
In 2008, Al Fayed told an inquest the list of alleged conspirators included Prince Philip, the husband of the late queen Elizabeth II, then-Prince Charles, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Diana’s sister Sarah McCorquodale, two former London police chiefs and the CIA.
However, the official British and French investigations of the crash concluded Diana and Dodi’s driver was speeding while intoxicated, causing the car to crash.
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