British police are investigating Diana's death again

Maria Puente | USA TODAY

British police announced Saturday they are again investigating Princess Diana's death.

British media and the Associated Press reported that Scotland Yard is examining the "relevance and credibility" of newly received information relating to the deaths of Diana and her companion, Dodi Fayed, who also was killed, along with their driver, in a car crash in a Paris traffic tunnel on Aug. 31, 1997.

In a statement Scotland Yard said that the assessment will be carried out by officers from its specialist crime and operations unit.

Palace press officials representing Diana's sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, declined to comment.

The Telegraph reported that the new information alleges that Diana was "murdered" by a member of the British military, and that the allegation came to the Yard from the Royal Military Police, who in turn got it from the in-laws of a former soldier.

Conspiracy theories popped up practically from the moment the Princess of Wales' death was announced to a stunned nation, sending much of the United Kingdom prostrate with unprecedented public grieving.

Mohamed Fayed, the Egyptian-born tycoon who is Dodi's father, accused the royal family of ordering the British secret services to kill Diana in order to prevent her from marrying a Muslim and giving birth to a Muslim half brother to a future king, Prince William.

His claims were exposed as unfounded, most recently by a British coroner's inquiry in 2008. Repeated investigations have concluded that Diana died because her driver was drunk and driving too fast in order to evade paparazzi, and she was not wearing a seat belt when he lost control and the car slammed into a tunnel pillar at a high rate of speed.

The news of a new investigation comes just a month before the premiere in London of a new movie, Diana, starring Naomi Watts, which chronicles her secret two-year, doomed love affair with a Pakistani heart surgeon.