Diana Inquest: Two Controversial Testimonies

Mohamed al Fayed takes the stand on day when Sun claims Paul Burrell lied.

ByABC News
February 9, 2009, 9:54 PM

LONDON, Feb. 18, 2008 — -- Diana's former butler Paul Burrell has reportedly said he "didn't tell the whole truth" to the inquest investigating the princess' death.

Burrell was caught on tape, according to Britain's The Sun newspaper.

"I told the truth as far as I could but I didn't tell the whole truth," Burrell apparently says on the grainy tape. "Perjury is not a nice thing to have to contemplate."

At other times in the secretly taped three-hour video, Burrell is heard saying, "I was very naughty and I made a couple of red herrings, and I couldn't help doing it."

"I know you shouldn't play with justice and I know it's illegal and I realize how serious it is," conceded Burrell on the tape.

ABC News was not able to immediately reach Paul Burrell for comment.

The video was reportedly shot in a New York hotel room while Burrell was negotiating deals for new ranges of jewelry and table linen. The man who calls himself "Diana's rock" now lives in Florida and makes a living selling his own lines of household goods and wine. Last month Burrell came to London for three days of grilling at the inquest.

"Do you think I've told the truth? Of course not," Burrell says on The Sun's tape.

Regarding a conversation Burrell claims he had with the queen shortly after Diana's death, he says: "The conversation with the queen was three hours long. And I wasn't about to sit there and divulge everything she said to me."

Burrell has said in the past that the queen had told him that there are "dark forces" at work in Britain.

On the tape Burrell goes on to say that when Prince Charles takes the throne and his wife, Camilla, becomes queen, he will quit Britain for good.

"Quite frankly, Britain can f-- off," he says. "I will give up my British passport and become an American. Quite happily."

On the tape Burrell also makes an extraordinary claim about another key player in the Diana drama: Mohamed al Fayed, whose son Dodi was killed with Diana in that Paris crash and who has been the driving force behind this public inquest into their deaths.

"The sadness of all this is, I think he's dying and this is his last shot," Burrell is heard saying.

This morning al Fayed took the stand for the first time and told the inquest that Diana and his son Dodi were murdered.

Al Fayed claimed this morning that Diana told him during a telephone call that she was pregnant with Dodi's baby and that the couple was about to announce their engagement.