Lawyers for the women who accuse Mohamed Al Fayed of rape and sexual assault say they have received “more than 150 new applications” from alleged victims and people with evidence against the former Harrods owner.
At a news conference Friday, the lawyers spoke of a “quarter century of sexual assault.”
At least 37 women “from all over the world” have accused Egyptian Mohamed Al Fayed, who died last year at the age of 94, of sexually assaulting them.
Al-Fayed is the father of Princess Diana’s last lover, Dodi Al-Fayed, who died with her in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997.
The lawyers representing the claimants have received “more than 150 new requests” for information since the BBC aired an investigation on Thursday evening entitled “Al Fayed: Harrods Predator”.
The Harrods website has published a form that any alleged victim can fill out.
“If you wish to claim compensation, Harrods has established procedures, with the assistance of specialist external lawyers,” the website wrote.
During the press conference, the lawyers spoke of a “system that was followed to find women” and plan to sexually assault them, and compared this case to the cases of Americans Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
Many of the claimants were former employees of Harrods, and some of them were at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, which was also owned by Al Fayed.
On Saturday, a former director of Fulham Football Club said that measures had been taken to protect the players from Mohamed Al-Fayed, who owned the club between 1997 and 2013.
“I read all the papers yesterday and, to be honest, I wasn’t too surprised,” Gaut Haugennes, former manager of Fulham Women’s between 2001 and 2003, told the BBC.
“We knew he liked young blonde girls. So we made sure that no such incident happened, and we provided protection for the players,” he added.
Fulham Football Club has expressed “disturbance and concern” after the allegations against its former owner.
“We have great sympathy for the women involved,” a club spokesman said, adding that Fulham were “investigating whether any players have been subjected to similar incidents”.
Mohamed Al Fayed was born on January 27, 1929, in a modest suburb of the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria, and spent much of his life in Britain, where he became the owner of Harrods in 1985 and Fulham Football Club between 1997 and 2013.
According to the BBC, Al-Fayed had previously been accused of similar acts, and the police opened an investigation in 2015 on charges of rape. However, no charges were brought against the businessman.
ظهرت في الأصل على www.alhurra.com