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Princess Diana was not pregnant when she died in a Paris car crash nine years ago this month, says the manager of the London mortuary where her post-mortem examination took place.
The assertion by Robert Thompson, in an upcoming TV documentary, contradicts a die-hard conspiracy theory which claims that Diana was murdered on orders from the British royal family because she was carrying her lover's baby.
In "Who Killed Diana?", Thompson said only Diana -- former wife of Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne -- was only embalmed in the upper part of her body, for cosmetic reasons ahead of her pre-funeral exposition.
"I saw no evidence of pregnancy exposed during the post-mortem procedure, and indeed the pathologist said that she was not pregnant," said Thompson, according to excerpts from the programme in the Times newspaper Saturday.
"Drawing together what I heard and what I saw on that day in the post-mortem room -- the pathologist said to me: 'Well, she wasn't pregnant.' I saw no evidence of pregnancy within her body."
"My conclusion must be that she wasn't pregnant."
Diana -- who divorced Charles in 1996 after a stormy marriage -- died alongside her lover Dodi Fayed and their driver Henri Paul in a car crash in an underpass in the French capital on August 31, 1997.
French investigators blamed the tragedy on Paul driving too fast under the influence of prescription drugs.
But Fayed's father Mohamed Al Fayed, the Egyptian-born tycoon who owns Harrods department store in London, still suspects that Diana was expecting his son's child, and that she was killed on orders from the royal family.
His allegation has not been ruled out by Lord John Stevens, former head of London's Metropolitan Police, who is leading an ongoing official investigation in Britain into Diana's death.
"Who Killed Diana?" is to air on Britain's Sky One television on Monday.
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AFP 191000 GMT 08 06
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