I, Richard John Charles Tomlinson, former MI6 officer, of Geneva, Switzerland hereby declare:
1.. I firmly believe that there exist documents held by the British Secret
Intelligence Service (MI6) that would
yield important new evidence into the cause and circumstances leading to
the deaths of the Princess of Wales,
Mr Dodi Al Fayed, and M. Henri Paul in Paris in August 1997.
2.. I was employed by MI6 between September 1991 and April 1995. During
that time, I saw various documents
that I believe would provide new evidence and new leads into the investigation
into these deaths. I also heard
various rumours which though I was not able to see supporting documents
I am confident were based on
solid fact.
3.. In 1992, I was working in the Eastern European Controllerate of MI6
and I was peripherally
involved in a large and complicated operation to smuggle advanced Soviet
weaponry out of the then disintegrating
and disorganised remnants of the Soviet Union. During 1992, I spent several
days reading the substantial files on
this operation. These files contain a wide miscellany of contact notes,
telegrams, intelligence reports,
photographs etc, from which it was possible to build up a detailed understanding
of the operation. The operation
involved a large cast of officers and agents of MI6. On more than one occasion,
meetings between various
figures in the operation took place at the Ritz Hotel, Place de Vendome,
Paris. There were in the file several
intelligence reports on these meetings, which had been written by one of
the MI6 officers based in Paris at the
time (identified in the file only by a coded designation). The source of
the information was an informant in the Ritz
Hotel, who again was identified in the files only by a code number. The
MI6 officer paid the informant in cash for his
information. I became curious to learn more about the identity of this
particular informant, because his number
cropped up several times and he seemed to have extremely good access to
the goings on in the Ritz Hotel. I
therefore ordered this informants personal file from MI6's central file
registry. When I read this new file, I was
not at all surprised to learn that the informant was a security officer
of the Ritz Hotel. Intelligence services always
target the security officers of important hotels because they have such
good access to intelligence. I
remember, however, being mildly surprised that the nationality of this
informant was French, and this stuck in my
memory, because it is rare that MI6 succeeds in recruiting a French informer.
I cannot claim that I remember
from this reading of the file that the name of this person was Henri Paul,
but I have no doubt with the benefit of
hindsight that this was he. Although I did not subsequently come across
Henri Paul again during my time in MI6,
I am confident that the relationship between he and MI6 would have continued
until his death, because MI6 would
never willingly relinquish control over such a well placed informant. I
am sure that the personal file of Henri Paul
will therefore contain notes of meetings between him and his MI6 controlling
officer right up until the point of his
death. I firmly believe that these files will contain evidence of crucial
importance to the circumstances and causes
of the incident that killed M. Paul, together with the Princess of Wales
and Dodi Al Fayed.
4.. The most senior undeclared officer in the local MI6 station would normally
control an informant of
M. Paul's usefulness and seniority. Officers declared to the local counter-intelligence
service (in this case the
Directorate de Surveillance Territoire, or DST) would not be used to control
such an informant, because it might
lead to the identity of the informant becoming known to the local intelligence
services. In Paris at the time of M.
Paul's death, there were two relatively experienced but undeclared MI6
officers. The first was Mr Nicholas
John Andrew LANGMAN, born 1960. The second was Mr Richard David SPEARMAN,
again born in 1960. I firmly
believe that either one or both of these officers will be well acquainted
with M Paul, and most probably also met
M. Paul shortly before his death. I believe that either or both of these
officers will have knowledge that will be of
crucial importance in establishing the sequence of events leading up to
the deaths of M.Paul, Dodi Al Fayed and
the Princess of Wales. Mr Spearman in particular was an extremely well
connected and influential officer,
because he had been, prior to his appointment in Paris, the personal secretary
to the Chief of MI6 Mr David
SPEDDING. As such, he would have been privy to even the most confidential
of MI6 operations. I believe that
there may well be significance in the fact that Mr Spearman was posted
to Paris in the month immediately before
the deaths.
5.. Later in 1992, as the civil war in the former Yugoslavia became increasingly
topical, I started to work primarily
on operations in Serbia. During this time, I became acquainted with Dr
Nicholas Bernard Frank FISHWICK, born
1958, the MI6 officer who at the time was in charge of planning Balkan
operations. During one meeting with Dr
Fishwick, he casually showed to me a three-page document that on closer
inspection turned out to be an outline
plan to assassinate the Serbian leader President Slobodan Milosevic. The
plan was fully typed, and attached to a
yellow "minute board", signifying that this was a formal and accountable
document. It will therefore still be in
existence. Fishwick had annotated that the document be circulated to the
following senior MI6 officers: Maurice
KENDWRICK-PIERCEY, then head of Balkan operations, John RIDDE, then the
security officer for Balkan
operations, the SAS liaison officer to MI6 (designation MODA/SO, but I
have forgotten his name), the head of the
Eastern European Controllerate (then Richard FLETCHER) and finally Alan
PETTY, the personal secretary to the
then Chief of MI6, Colin McCOLL. This plan contained a political
justification for the assassination of Milosevic,
followed by three outline proposals on how to achieve this objective. I
firmly believe that the third of these scenarios contained information
that could be useful in establishing the
causes of death of Henri Paul, the Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al Fayed.
This third scenario suggested that
Milosevic could be assassinated by causing his personal limousine to crash.
Dr Fishwick proposed to arrange the
crash in a tunnel, because the proximity of concrete close to the road
would ensure that the crash would be
sufficiently violent to cause death or serious injury, and would also reduce
the possibility that there might be
independent, casual witnesses. Dr Fishwick suggested that one way to cause
the crash might be to disorientate
the chauffeur using a strobe flash gun, a device which is occasionally
deployed by special forces to, for example,
disorientate helicopter pilots or terrorists, and about which MI6 officers
are briefed about during their training. In
short, this scenario bore remarkable similarities to the circumstances
and witness accounts of the crash that
killed the Princess of Wales, Dodi Al Fayed, and Henri Paul. I firmly believe
that this document should be yielded
by MI6 to the Judge investigating these deaths, and would provide further
leads that he could follow.
6.. During my service in MI6, I also learnt unofficially and second-hand
something of the links between MI6 and
the Royal Household. MI6 are frequently and routinely asked by the Royal
Household (usually via the Foreign
Office) to provide intelligence on potential threats to members of the
Royal Family whilst on overseas trips. This
service would frequently extend to asking friendly intelligence services
(such as the CIA) to place members of the
Royal Family under discrete surveillance, ostensibly for their own protection.
This was particularly the case for
the Princess of Wales, who often insisted on doing without overt personal
protection, even on overseas trips.
Although contact between MI6 and the Royal Household was officially only
via the Foreign Office, I learnt while in
MI6 that there was unofficial direct contact between certain senior and
influential MI6 officers and senior members
of the Royal Household. I did not see any official papers on this subject,
but I am confident that the information is
correct. I firmly believe that MI6 documents would yield substantial leads
on the nature of their links with the
Royal Household, and would yield vital information about MI6 surveillance
on the Princess of Wales in the days
leading to her death.
7.. I also learnt while in MI6 that one of the "paparazzi" photographers
who routinely
followed the Princess of Wales was a member of "UKN", a small corps of
part-time MI6 agents who provide
miscellaneous services to MI6 such as surveillance and photography expertise.
I do not know the identity of this
photographer, or whether he was one of the photographers present at the
time of the fatal incident. However, I am
confident that examination of UKN records would yield the identity of this
photographer, and would enable the
inquest to eliminate or further investigate that potential line of enquiry.
8.. On Friday August 28 1998, I gave much of this information to Judge
Herve Stephan, the
French investigative Judge in charge of the inquest into the accident.
The lengths which MI6, the CIA
and the DST have taken to deter me giving this evidence and subsequently
to stop me talking about it,
suggests that they have something to hide.
9.. On Friday 31 July 1998, shortly before my appointment with Judge Herve
Stephan, the DST arrested me in
my Paris hotel room. Although I have no record of violent conduct I was
arrested with such ferocity and at
gunpoint that I received a broken rib. I was taken to the headquarters
of the DST, and interrogated for 38 hours. Despite
my repeated requests, I was never given any justification for the arrest
and was not shown the arrest warrant. Even
though I was released without charge, the DST confiscated from me my laptop
computer and Psion organiser. They
illegally gave these to MI6 who took them back to the UK. They were not
returned for six months, which is illegal
and caused me great inconvenience and financial cost.
10.. On Friday 7th August 1998 I boarded a Qantas flight at Auckland International
airport, New Zealand, for a
flight to Sydney, Australia where I was due to give a television interview
to the Australian Channel Nine television
company. I was in my seat, awaiting take off, when an official boarded
the plane and told me to get off. At the
airbridge, he told me that the airline had received a fax "from Canberra"
saying that there was a problem with my
travel papers. I immediately asked to see the fax, but I was told that
"it was not possible". I believe that this is
because it didn't exist. This action was a ploy to keep me in New Zealand
so that the New Zealand police could
take further action against me. I had been back in my Auckland hotel room
for about half an hour when the New
Zealand police and NZSIS, the New Zealand Secret Intelligence Service,
raided me. After being detained and searched
for about three hours, they eventually confiscated from me all my remaining
computer equipment that the French DST
had not succeeded in taking from me. Again, I didn't get some of these
items back until six months later.
11.. Moreover, shortly after I had given this evidence to Judge Stephan,
I was invited to talk about this evidence
in a live television interview on America's NBC television channel. I flew
from Geneva to JFK airport on Sunday
30 August to give the interview in New York on the following Monday morning.
Shortly after arrival at John F
Kennedy airport, the captain of the Swiss Air flight told all passengers
to return to their seats. Four US
Immigration authority officers entered the plane, came straight to my seat,
asked for my passport and identity,
and then frogmarched me off the plane. I was taken to the immigration detention
centre, photographed,
fingerprinted, manacled by my ankle to a chair for seven hours, served
with deportation papers (exhibit 1) and
then returned on the next available plane to Geneva. I was not allowed
to make any telephone calls to the
representatives of NBC awaiting me in the airport. The US Immigration Officers
- who were all openly sympathetic
to my situation and apologised for treating me so badly - openly admitted
that they were acting under instructions
from the CIA.
12.. In January of this year, I booked a chalet in the village of Samoens
in the French Alps for
a ten day snowboarding holiday with my parents. I picked up my parents
from Geneva airport in a hire car on the
evening of January 8, and set off for the French border. At the French
customs post, our car was stopped and I was
detained. Four officers from the DST held me for four hours. At the end
of this interview, I was served with the
deportation papers below (exhibit 2), and ordered to return to Switzerland.
Note that in the papers, my supposed
destination has been changed from "Chamonix" to "Samoens". This is because
when first questioned by a junior
DST officer, I told him that my destination was "Chamonix". When a senior
officer arrived an hour or so later, he
crossed out the word and changed it to "Samoens", without ever even asking
or confirming this with me. I believe
this is because MI6 had told them of my true destination, having learnt
the information through surveillance on
my parent's telephone in the UK. My banning from France is entirely illegal
under European law. I have a British
passport and am entitled to travel freely within the European Union. MI6
have "done a deal" with the DST to have
me banned, and have not used any recognised legal mechanism to deny my
rights to freedom of travel. I believe
that the DST and MI6 have banned me from France because they wanted to
prevent me from giving further
evidence to Judge Stephan's inquest, which at the time, I was planning
to do.
13.. Whatever MI6s role in the events leading to the death of the Princess
of Wales, Dodi Al Fayed and
Henri Paul, I am absolutely certain that there is substantial evidence
in their files that would provide crucial
evidence in establishing the exact causes of this tragedy. I believe that
they have gone to considerable lengths to
obstruct the course of justice by interfering with my freedom of speech
and travel, and this in my view confirms
my belief that they have something to hide. I believe that the protection
given to MI6 files under the Official
Secrets Act should be set aside in the public interest in uncovering once
and for all the truth behind these dramatic
and historically momentous events.