No perjury charge for Diana's butler

LONDON, May 10 (UPI) -- British prosecutors have decided against charging Paul Burrell, the late Princess Diana's one-time butler, with perjury.

The Metropolitan Police announced Friday that investigators had determined they could not prove Burrell deliberately lied at the inquest into Diana's death in a 1997 car crash in Paris, The Sun reported. The decision was made with advice from the Crown Prosecution Service and Lord Justice Scott Baker, who presided over the inquest.

Baker was scathing about Burrell in his summing up of the case, both for his testimony and for his claims to have been the princess's "rock."

In February, The Sun obtained a video tape in which Burrell at a hotel in New York said he "didn't tell the whole truth" on the stand.

"Perjury is not a nice thing to have to contemplate," he said. "I was very naughty and I made a couple of red herrings."

Burrell said he made those statements after a night of heavy drinking.

The inquest, held a decade after Diana's death, was an effort to lay to rest conspiracy theories. Mohammed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods Department Store, maintained the crash, which also killed his son, Dodi, was engineered to prevent his marriage to the princess.