Ex-police chief regrets not interrogating Martin Bashir earlier over Diana interview

Former BBC journalist Martin Bashir only just got proven guilty of manipulating Princess Diana for her infamous Panorama interview.

Reports have now revealed that the disgraced presenter would have been quizzed by the Metropolitan Police if they knew he had forged bank documents to deceive the Princess of Wales into having an explosive interview with him.

Former leader of the Metropolitan Police, Lord Stevens revealed in a new interview with the Daily Mail that he regrets not questioning Bashir amidst the three-year probe into the case from 2004.

“If there’d been an allegation then that Bashir had produced allegedly fake documents to Princess Diana, which is a criminal offence, we’d have investigated it. My goodness me, we would have done,” said the former Met commissioner.

“But this has only come out recently, which is unfortunate. If we’d known at the time of Paget we would certainly, certainly have gone and seen him and interviewed him. And it would have been part and parcel of the inquiry to get to the bottom of it,” he shared.

“We don’t know what Bashir was saying to Diana. But if he had put the fears in her mind which had caused her to write that note then that is what caused us to interview Charles,” he added.

“When we watched the Panorama interview at the start of the inquiry it didn’t cross our mind that Bashir could have done anything fraudulent.”

“After all, this was the BBC, this was their flagship programme and it was being broadcast to the world. There was nothing said in the interview we didn’t know about by then. What we didn’t know of course was how Bashir had managed to get it,” he added.