Mohammed Al-Fayed, the wealthy owner of the Ritz and Harrods stores in London, was a sexual predator, according to explosive accusations made by five women who spoke to the BBC in a series of documentaries broadcast on September 19. They claim to have been repeatedly assaulted, but also raped (some of them minors at the time of the events), by this friend of the powerful and the stars, father of Dodi Al-Fayed, Diana's last lover, who died with her in a car accident under the Pont de l'Alma in Paris in 1997.
Since then, revelations have followed one another about the conduct of this Egyptian businessman, who died in 2023 at the age of 94. More and more women, all employees of Harrods between the 1980s and the early 2000s, contacted the BBC to testify to sexual assaults.
On Saturday 21 September, Bruce Drummond, a lawyer at New Bailey Chambers and a member of the team defending 37 alleged victims of Mohammed Al-Fayed, told BBC Radio 4 that 150 new individual investigations have been opened since the British public broadcaster's scoop. These include: “probably the worst case of sexual exploitation of young women in the world” says the lawyer, who during a press conference the day before, in the presence of victims, compared the businessman to the American producer Harvey Weinstein.
The events allegedly took place, according to witnesses, in the billionaire's London apartment, during his trips to Dubai, at the Ritz in Paris or in the Windsor villa, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. This former residence of the short-lived King Edward VIII (who abdicated after eleven months of reign) had been bought by Mohammed Al-Fayed in the mid-1980s.
The “most fragile prey”
“I made it very clear that I didn't want to. I didn't give my consent, I just wanted him to get it over with,” says one of the five women in the BBC documentary who accuses Mr Al-Fayed of a rape at his Park Lane flat. Most of the alleged victims gave their testimony under assumed names or preferred to remain anonymous. Another, Gemma, also worked as the businessman's personal assistant between 2007 and 2009. She says she was raped at the Windsor villa. Natacha, who gave evidence at the press conference on Friday with her lawyers, says she was tested for HIV and sexually transmitted infections by Harrods management, but never received the results.
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Source: Lemonde
