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Princess Diana’s ex, cardiologist Hasnat Khan, who dated the late royal from 1995 until shortly before her death in 1997, is breaking his silence and opening up about her infamous BBC Panorama interview.
“One of her most attractive qualities was her vulnerability. It was what endeared her to the public. I later realised that Martin [Bashir] picked on those vulnerabilities and exploited them,” Khan, now 62, told the Daily Mail. “He was very persuasive with Diana. It was all about him being from the BBC, being respectable and very pious even. But he filled her head with rubbish.”
Khan is famously private, according to People, and has rarely spoken publicly about Diana over the years, but decided to weigh in on the ongoing controversy surrounding her BBC interview, which he says made her paranoid “with talk of bugs and phone-tapping.
The cardiologist also shared a story about a meeting he sat in on with Diana and Bashir ahead of the infamous interview.
“Almost from the word go, he started asking me the most direct personal questions about Diana and our relationship. Why didn’t we get married? When were we going to get married? That kind of thing. There was something about Bashir I didn’t like. I told her to be careful of him,” Khan said. “Of course I am not naïve. I knew that there was a part of Diana that wanted to give an interview but my question is if Martin Bashir had not been there persuading her, would she ever have done it?”
This article originally appeared on marie claire U.S.
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