LONDON - A French couple who drove through the Pont d'Alma tunnel just before a car carrying Diana struck a concrete pillar, told a British inquest on Wednesday that they heard two very loud bangs but could not see what happened.
The inquest is investigating the deaths of the Princess of Wales and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, on Aug. 31, 1997. Henri Paul, who was driving their Mercedes car, also died in the crash.
Jean-Pascal and Severine Peyret, who were travelling in the same direction as the princess' car, recalled hearing two loud crashes as they reached the end of the tunnel. Neither recalled seeing any other cars ahead or behind them.
"I tried to look behind but I could not see anything,'' Severine Peyret said via video-link from Paris. She recalled seeing a motorcycle go past their car after the sounds of the crash.
Her husband, Jean-Pascal Peyret, said he at first believed the sounds had come from the overpass above them, and he said he could see nothing in his rearview mirror.
Among the issues before the inquest is the belief that the couple were being chased by paparazzi photographers, some on motorcycles.
In a statement to French police on the day of the crash, Severine Peyret said the motorcycle passed her car "at a very high speed.''
"I quickly understood that the motorcycle could have been implied in the collision and that its driver was trying to get away from the place,'' she said in her deposition.
Ten years on, she said she had no clear memory of the motorcycle's speed nor the behaviour of its lone rider. Her husband did not recall seeing a motorcycle.
Jean-Pascal Peyret, who was driving, said that no other car passed him after he left the tunnel. Some earlier witnesses had reported seeing a second car beside Diana's car, travelling at the same high speed on the city's streets -- estimated by police to be around 100 kilometres an hour.
Neither he nor his wife recalled seeing a bright flash of light an instant before the crash.
Fayed's father, Mohamed al Fayed, has claimed that a blinding flash may have been used by rogue British agents in a murder plot orchestrated by the Queen's husband, Prince Philip.
Both the French and British police ruled out a conspiracy, concluding that Paul was drunk and driving too fast.
