PARIS — A decade after Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed were killed in a Paris car crash, a British coroner's jury comes to the French capital this week to retrace the lovers' fatal path in an attempt to put to rest the dark suspicions surrounding their deaths.

Although the events leading up to the deaths have already been dissected in two lengthy investigations, the visit today and Tuesday marks the first time an inquest jury has left Britain.

It is known, however, that they will visit the Place de l'Alma by the underpass where the Mercedes crashed and the Pitie Salpetiere Hospital where Diana died.

"It is very difficult to conduct this sort of visit where you are leaving the protection ... offered by your own legal system," said a spokesman for the inquest, who asked not to be named in keeping with British procedure. "All of a sudden, we are about to walk down streets in Paris with no legal authority over those people around us."

Diana, 36, and Fayed, 42, were killed along with their driver, Henri Paul, when their Mercedes crashed in the Pont d'Alma tunnel shortly after midnight on Aug. 31, 1997. Bodyguard Trevor Rees was badly injured but survived.

The group was heading from the Ritz Hotel to Fayed's private Paris home near the Arc de Triomphe. Dodi Fayed's father, Egyptian-born billionaire Mohamed al Fayed, has said it was their engagement night.

Whether Diana and Fayed planned to announce their engagement the next day — and whether she was pregnant with Fayed's child — are questions the jury must try to clear up.

Mohamed al Fayed claims the couple was murdered in a plot directed by Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II's husband, to keep a Muslim out of the royal spheres.

A French investigation concluded that the car was traveling at an excessive speed and the driver had a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit.