Princess Diana — Secret Fight To Exhume Her Body

Princess Diana's tragic death on August 31, 1997, left a legacy of unsolved mysteries — with outraged authorities demanding that her body be exhumed for a second autopsy!

The beloved icon's death would lead to an international incident over claims the British government had pressured French authorities to illegally embalm Diana just hours after her fatal crash in a Parisian tunnel.

In 2003, concerned ministers in Paris even attempted a complicated diplomatic process to remove the princess from her island grave — to perform a new and complete autopsy!

The National ENQUIRER learned that French authorities had sparked new suspicions of a cover-up with their disclosure that British palace officials had interfered with Diana's remains. The order to embalm the princess came before a proper autopsy could be performed.

"To give such an order in France is not only unheard of, it is strictly illegal," said a friend of Mohammed Al Fayed, the father of Di's lover Dodi — who, along with drunken chauffeur Henri Paul, was also killed in the crash.

"The French have become very sensitive about the Paris hospital's role in the entire drama," added royal expert Harold Brooks-Baker, citing the dramatic efforts to save Diana's life after the crash. "They want the good name of their medical team upheld, and that is why they feel exhumation and an autopsy can provide answers that may have been overlooked."

After surgeons at Pitie Salpetriere Hospital battled desperately to save Diana, her body was sent to a Paris mortuary — where Professor Dominique Lecomte, the chief pathologist, said she was ordered to embalm the princess's body from the waist up.

But the professor and other French medical officials never revealed who issued the urgent order. "The decision to embalm Diana immediately and take the body back to London was made in Britain," said Brooks-Baker, "not Paris. Why she was embalmed before an autopsy took place has always puzzled me."

Other royal observers speculated that the British royal family wanted Diana's body embalmed to erase any evidence that she might be pregnant by Dodi, a Muslim who also had a wild reputation as an international playboy.

  "French laws ban embalming before an autopsy because the substance experts use in the process formaldehyde corrupts some very important tests," said a source, "and one of them is pregnancy." And while Brooks-Baker said Diana's friends "hate the idea," other insiders had hoped the failed autopsy attempt would finally provide Diana with a decent resting place!

Many of Diana's friends were shocked that her body was buried at the Spencer family's ancestral home in the small parish of Althorp. Rumors persisted that it was the petty final snub from ex-husband Prince Charles and other members of the royal family.

"She would never have wanted to be out of reach of the public she loves so much," said close friend Lucia Flecha de Lima. "Why couldn't she be buried where everyone laid flowers in front of — Kensington Palace?"