When two law enforcement officials confronted Jaswant Singh Chail on the grounds of Windsor Citadel on Christmas morning in 2021, he was clad in black, carrying a metallic face-mask and wielding a crossbow. “I’m right here to kill the queen,” he advised them.
On Thursday, Mr. Chail was sentenced to 9 years in jail, having been convicted of treason in February. It was the primary treason conviction in Britain in additional than 4 a long time, in a case that raised troubling questions concerning the safety of Queen Elizabeth II. She died in September 2022 of pure causes, at 96 years previous.
Underneath a so-called hybrid order, Mr. Chail, 21, is to stay at Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric establishment the place he’s presently being handled, earlier than being transferred to a jail for the rest of his sentence.
The sentencing decide, Nicholas Hilliard, stated in courtroom {that a} psychiatrist had identified Mr. Chail, who’s from Southampton, as “psychotic, delusional and hallucinating.” After being rejected by the British Military, the decide stated, Mr. Chail got here to imagine he was a “Sith Lord,” a darkish character from the “Star Wars” franchise.
“His lifelong curiosity in ‘Star Wars’ took on completely different that means,” Decide Hilliard stated.
The decide additionally learn out a number of textual content messages that Mr. Chail exchanged with a synthetic intelligence chatbot that he created and known as his girlfriend “Sarai.” The messages advised that Mr. Chail was being inspired by his chatbot to hold out his risk to assassinate the queen.
Mr. Chail purchased the crossbow on-line in 2021 and commenced looking for details about Sandringham, the nation residence the place the queen historically spent the Christmas vacation. In 2021, nonetheless, she and her husband, Prince Philip, have been sequestered at Windsor Citadel due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Early on Christmas Day, Mr. Chail scaled the fortress’s wall with a nylon rope and spent about two hours roaming the grounds earlier than the Metropolitan Police noticed him at a gate resulting in the queen’s personal quarters at 8:10 a.m. One of many officers drew a Taser as they approached him, based on a police assertion. The officers found that he was carrying a crossbow, loaded with a bolt with the security catch off.
“Morning, can I assist, mate?” one of many officers requested Mr. Chail.
“I’m right here to kill the queen,” he replied, earlier than laying down the weapon and repeating his risk.
Mr. Chail, who’s of Sikh descent, advised the police he was performing to take revenge for the remedy of South Asians, citing the 1919 bloodbath in Amritsar, India, throughout which British troops fired on pro-independence demonstrators.
Along with treason, Mr. Chail pleaded responsible to 2 different fees: making threats to kill and possession of an offensive weapon. The case prompted calls on the federal government to crack down on the acquisition of crossbows.
The police stated it was an “extraordinarily critical incident,” which the officers defused with “bravery and professionalism.” Dominic Murphy, a senior counterterrorism officer at Met, because the police service is informally identified, advised the P.A. information company that Mr. Chail was “harmful and vengeful.”
It revived recollections of a good graver lapse in safety in 1982 when an intruder, Michael Fagan, broke into Buckingham Palace, discovered his strategy to the queen’s bed room and woke her up earlier than she known as for assist.
A yr earlier than that, a person fired six clean photographs on the queen as she rode previous on horseback throughout a parade in London. That man, Marcus Sarjeant, was additionally charged and convicted below the Treason Act.