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Princess Diana‘s life might have been saved if she hadn’t sat down for her infamous 1995 Panorama interview.

According to journalist Andy Webb, disgraced reporter Martin Bashir created a web of lies to scare the late Princess of Wales into speaking out against the royal family.

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What lies did Bashir tell Diana?

To secure an interview for the BBC, Bashir allegedly told Diana a laundry list of falsehoods about King Charles III, Queen Elizabeth II and other members of The Firm.

The ex-reporter fraudulently told the mother of two that her then-husband was plotting to have her, as well as his alleged mistress and now-wife, Queen Camilla, killed.

Bashir also allegedly used fake documents to try to prove that Charles got Prince William and Prince Harry‘s nanny pregnant, which was untrue.

In another wild claim, he made Diana believe her former mother-in-law was going to abdicate within six months.

Garratt Geoff / Mirrorpix/Newscom/The Mega Agency

Bashir’s ‘control’ over Diana

Webb thinks that if Diana hadn’t been paranoid about the claims, she wouldn’t have lost her life in a car crash after being chased by paparazzi.

“He [Bashir] grooms her, he gaslights her, he terrifies her and you can even say you get to coercive control because what he wanted her to do was sit in front of the Panorama TV camera,” he told Australia’s Herald Sun.

“What happened to Diana is so lurid, so amazingly cruel, yet it is also kind of fascinating,” Webb continued. “When you look at the scandalous stuff, the betrayals, the murder plots, all of this stuff, I just know that this is truly, truly historical.”

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Inside Diana’s decision to speak with Bashir

Bashir was not the most notable person who wanted to speak with Diana about life behind the palace walls.

“People chasing Diana at that point included, even 30 years ago, a younger Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters, who was then the doyen of the A-list interview, David Frost, people like that,” Webb told the publication about journalists who wanted an exclusive sit-down with the princess.

“As a result of the lies Bashir told, Diana got rid of the people around her whom she trusted who had her best interests at heart, most important of all, her private secretary Patrick Jephson, he’s gone within weeks of the Panorama interview, she gets rid of her chauffeur,” the royal expert said.

Kent Gavin / Mirrorpix/Newscom/The Mega Agency

What could have been

Webb strongly feels Diana would be alive today if Bashir and the BBC had not lied to her face.

“Diana would be 64 years old, she’s got her five grandchildren, and for her family, it’s that knowledge, if the BBC had done what they clearly should have done, even on that basis of the simple duty of care to notifying on what had happened (with the interview) her life would have followed a different course,” he said.

“If Bashir hadn’t done what Bashir did, things would have been very, very different, of course they would,” Webb added. “What his bosses knew quite quickly was that Bashir had commissioned forged documents, they knew that he had passed these documents off as real, and they knew Bashir had lied about what he had done three times when asked about it.”