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Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell has made a poignant pilgrimage to the site of her fatal crash for the first time.

And as he laid flowers at the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, he told how four questions haunt him about the tragedy.

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death, Paul, 59, said: “I still don’t understand what that journey was about.”

He insisted the princess would still be alive had he been with her, and wants to know:

Why Diana and boyfriend Dodi Fayed did not stay in their suite at the Ritz Paris hotel.

Why Dodi and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones let her in the car if chauffeur Henri Paul was more than three times over the French drink limit, as toxicology reports revealed.

Why usually safety conscious Diana did not wear a seatbelt.

How it took one hour and 46 minutes from the crash to get dying Diana to hospital.

(Image: AFP)

Paul said: “It was strange to me the princess would want to cross Paris at midnight. Knowing her, she’d rather be tucked up in bed early. If you look at the footage of her going down in the lift in the Ritz, that is not a woman who wanted to go out.

“Why didn’t she stick to her guns, like she usually did, and say, ‘We’re staying here tonight’?

(Image: PA)

“And she always wore a seatbelt… so why wasn’t she that night? She wasn’t a fast driver and she would have been very scared of going so fast. I have this recurring nightmare of her screaming, ‘Slow down’.”

He is “very puzzled” why it took so long to go five miles to hospital and asked: “Who made the decision to go to that hospital?” And he rubbished the idea the chauffeur was drunk.

Paul said: “Why would Trevor let a drunk man drive him? Let alone Diana and Dodi? That’s rubbish. I think there was a mixing up of toxicology results.”