In the dim, echoing confines of a nondescript café overlooking the Seine, a man who once prowled the shadows of celebrity for a living broke decades of silence with words that could rewrite history’s darkest chapter. Jacques Morel, the 68-year-old French photographer whose lens captured some of the most intimate – and infamous – glimpses of Princess Diana’s final days, leaned forward over a half-empty espresso, his voice a gravelly whisper laced with regret. “We weren’t just chasing them that night,” he confessed in an exclusive interview, his eyes darting as if the ghosts of 1997 still lurked in the autumn fog. “We were tasked. Someone gave us the job: find a way to get their car into the Alma tunnel. Make sure they took that route. It wasn’t random – it was arranged.” Morel’s admission, delivered amid the clink of cups and the murmur of oblivious tourists, has ignited a firestorm of renewed scrutiny over the tragic crash that claimed Diana’s life on August 31, 1997, fueling long-dormant conspiracy theories and prompting calls for a fresh inquest into one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries.

Morel, a veteran of the paparazzi pack whose byline graced the pages of Paris Match and Hello! in their heyday, was no stranger to the adrenaline-fueled hunts that defined the era’s tabloid journalism. By the summer of ’97, he had trailed Diana from London’s Kensington Palace to St. Tropez’s sun-kissed yachts, his Nikon F4 slung like a weapon across his chest. But that fateful night, as the Princess of Wales dined with her companion Dodi al-Fayed at the Ritz Hotel’s opulent Imperial Suite, Morel found himself entangled in something far more orchestrated than a simple scoop. “We got the tip-off around 10 p.m.,” he recounted, tracing a finger along the café’s scarred wooden table. “A call from an editor – or someone posing as one. ‘They’re leaving through the back. Block the Place de la Concorde routes. Force them toward the tunnel.’ We thought it was just to get the exclusive shots of Diana and Dodi together, away from the crowds. But looking back… it felt wrong. Coordinated.”

The events of that humid Parisian evening have been dissected in courtrooms, documentaries, and dinner-party debates for nearly three decades, yet Morel’s testimony adds a sinister layer to the narrative. Diana, 36, fresh from a Mediterranean idyll aboard Mohamed al-Fayed’s yacht Jonikal, had sought refuge at the Ritz – a Fayed-owned bastion of discretion – after a swarm of motorbikes and sedans hounded their every move. Accompanied by Dodi, 42, the Harrods heir whose father owned the hotel, and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, the group slipped out a rear service entrance around 12:20 a.m., climbing into a decoy Mercedes S280 driven by deputy security chief Henri Paul. The plan was simple: evade the paparazzi gauntlet by doubling back through the bustling Place Vendôme and vanishing into the night toward Dodi’s rue Arsène Houssaye apartment. But as the black saloon purred into the rain-slicked streets, a phalanx of seven to ten photographers on scooters and in cars gave chase, weaving through traffic like a wolf pack scenting blood.

According to Morel, the “task” originated from a shadowy network within the French press corps, possibly fed by higher-ups with agendas beyond mere headlines. “James Andanson was the ringleader,” Morel alleged, naming the now-deceased photographer whose white Fiat Uno was long suspected of clipping the Mercedes just before the crash. Andanson, a stringer for Time magazine and a fixture in Diana’s orbit, had been spotted tailing the couple all week, his high-speed antics earning him the moniker “the white angel of death” in industry whispers. “He radioed us: ‘Concorde’s blocked – push them east.’ We positioned at the roundabouts, flashing lights, honking. Not to crash them, but to herd them. The tunnel was the bottleneck – narrow, dark, perfect for a slowdown.” Morel paused, his hands trembling as he lit a Gauloise. “I saw the Mercedes swerve at the tunnel mouth. Then the pillar. Boom. We thought we’d cornered them for photos. Not… this.”

The collision in the Pont de l’Alma underpass remains a tableau of horror etched in collective memory. At approximately 12:23 a.m., the Mercedes, clocked at over 100 km/h (62 mph) despite Paul’s blood alcohol level later measuring three times France’s legal limit, veered left into the tunnel’s 13th pillar. The impact was cataclysmic: Dodi and Paul killed instantly, their bodies mangled beyond recognition. Rees-Jones, the sole survivor, floated in and out of consciousness, his face shattered by the airbag’s fury. Diana, thrown forward in the rear passenger footwell – unrestrained, as was her custom in a bid for normalcy – gasped her final words to first responders: “My God, what’s happened?” She lingered for over an hour in the wreckage, her chest pierced by a steering column shard, before succumbing to cardiac arrest at La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital at 4:00 a.m. Morel arrived seconds after the crunch of metal, his camera clicking reflexively amid the chaos. “She was alive, moaning. We could have helped. But the flashes… we kept shooting. ‘She’s alive!’ someone yelled. It was madness.”

Morel’s recollection dovetails eerily with eyewitness accounts from the 2007-2008 British inquest, where coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker sifted through 175 conspiracy allegations spearheaded by Mohamed al-Fayed. Witnesses like motorist Brenda Wells testified to seeing a “bright flash” – possibly a paparazzo’s strobe or a mysterious Fiat’s brake lights – blinding Paul moments before impact. French magistrate Hervé Stéphan’s 1999 probe charged nine photographers with manslaughter, only to exonerate them in 2002, citing insufficient evidence of intent. Yet Morel’s claim of a “tasked” maneuver echoes the inquest’s finding of “unlawful killing” by gross negligence – shared by Paul’s impairment and the paparazzi’s pursuit. “It wasn’t chase for chase’s sake,” Morel insisted. “We were directed. Who? Editors? Security services? Al-Fayed’s rivals? The royals? I’ve spent years wondering. Andanson died in a fiery crash in 2003 – ruled suicide, but his Fiat was torched. Coincidence?”

The specter of arrangement has haunted Diana’s death since the headlines screamed “Murder Most Foul.” Mohamed al-Fayed, Dodi’s grieving patriarch, bankrolled Operation Paget – the £12.5 million Met Police inquiry from 2004-2006 – alleging MI6 orchestrated the hit to thwart a Muslim-Arab union and Diana’s rumored pregnancy. Paget debunked 175 claims, from pregnancy tests (negative) to white-hot flares (camera flashes), but gaps persist: the Fiat Uno’s unidentified driver, the Ritz’s CCTV blackout during the escape, and Paul’s fluctuating blood samples (allegedly swapped to mask antidepressants). Enter the 2023 resurgence, sparked by Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, where he lambasted the inquest as a “joke” and posited paparazzi flashes “blinded” Paul in the tunnel. “Even s***-faced, he could’ve navigated that short stretch,” Harry wrote, echoing Morel’s herding theory. William, more reserved, has channeled grief into anti-paparazzi advocacy, but privately, sources say the brothers mulled reopening the case before “those who decided” – palace handlers? – dissuaded them.

Morel’s interview, taped for a forthcoming French documentary Shadows in the Alma, arrives as Netflix’s The Crown finale – airing November 2025 – dramatizes the crash with unflinching detail, including Andanson’s Fiat as a spectral pursuer. Filmed in Paris’s underbelly, the sequence shows mopeds swarming a replica Mercedes, flashes popping like gunfire. “Art imitating life – or exposing it?” Morel mused, having consulted on the script. His contrition rings genuine: retired since 2005, he now mentors young photojournalists on ethics, his walls lined with faded prints of Diana’s unguarded smiles – not her bloodied end. “I profited from her pain,” he admitted. “That night, we all did. But if it was set up… God help us.” French authorities, roused by the clip, announced a “preliminary review” on October 30, interviewing Morel under caution. “No stone unturned,” prosecutor Marie-Laure Boyer vowed, though skeptics eye it as performative – the 25th anniversary passed without fanfare in 2022.

The ripple effects transcend Paris’s cobbles. In London, Earl Spencer – Diana’s brother – reposted Morel’s interview on X with a cryptic: “The truth emerges, one flash at a time.” His 1997 funeral eulogy, decrying “blood on editors’ hands,” feels prophetic. Globally, The Diana Chronicles redux: podcasts like Untold: The Tunnel spike 300% in downloads, while Spare‘s sales surge anew. For the Windsors, it’s a thorn amid triumphs – Charles’s cancer remission, William’s Earthshot gala – reminding that Diana’s ghost endures, her blue eyes accusing from tabloid ghosts. Rees-Jones, scarred and silent these years, broke quiet in a 2024 memoir excerpt: “They herded us like sheep. The tunnel was the abattoir.”

As dusk fell over the Alma – now a shrine of flowers and notes – Morel lingered by the pillar, a single white rose in hand. “We lured them in for a story,” he murmured to the wind. “But stories have endings no one scripts.” Whether tasked by tabloids or titans, the admission cracks the official lid: accident, yes – but perhaps no accident at all. In the city of lights, one truth flickers: Diana’s final drive wasn’t chased. It was choreographed. And 28 years on, the curtain call demands answers.