Al-Fayed accused of sexual violence: victims’ lawyers receive more than 150 requests for information

Lawyers for the women who accused the former owner of the Harrods store, Mohamed Al-Fayed, of sexual violence, received “more than 150 new requests” for information, after the broadcast of a BBC program on the subject, they said this Saturday.

The information followed a press conference, held on Friday, in which lawyers denounced “a quarter of a century of sexual assaults”.

At least 37 women accuse Mohamed Al-Fayed, who died last year aged 94, of rape and sexual assault. At least 5 of them claim to have been raped by Al-Fayed, who was the father of Princess Diana’s last companion, Dodi, who died in Paris, on August 31, 1997, in the car accident that killed the couple.

The team of lawyers representing the victims has received “more than 150 new requests” for information since the BBC broadcast a program called “Al-Fayed: A Predator at Harrods” on Thursday night. They are requests from “survivors and people with evidence about Al-Fayed”, they told AFP.

The Harrods website now has a form available for victims to fill out.

“If you wish to make a complaint, Harrods has an established procedure, with the help of specialist external lawyers,” they said.

Mohamed Al-Fayed, born on January 27, 1929 in a modest suburb of Alexandria, Egypt, spent much of his life in the United Kingdom, where he became owner of Harrods in 1985 and the football club Fulham FC between 1997 and 2013 .

According to the BBC, he had already been accused of similar acts and the police opened a rape investigation in 2015.

But the father of Princess Diana’s last boyfriend, Dodi, who died with her in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997, was never charged.