A British man who broke into Windsor Castle with a loaded crossbow and planned to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II has been handed a nine-year jail sentence.
Jaswant Singh Chail, 21, pleaded guilty to three charges, including treason and possession of an offensive weapon, at a hearing at London’s Old Bailey court on Friday following an investigation by the London Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command.
Two officers spotted Chail within the grounds of Windsor Castle, where the Queen was staying at the time, at around 8:10 a.m. on December 25, 2021, wearing black clothes and a metal mask, according to a statement issued by the police force.
Chail, who appeared at the trial via videolink from Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, was carrying a crossbow “loaded with a bolt, with the safety catch off and ready to fire.” He told a police protection officer, “I am here to kill the Queen,” before being arrested, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported.
Chail was thought to have scaled the perimeter of the grounds with a nylon rope ladder beforehand.
He is understood to have sent a video to about 20 people “claiming he was going to attempt to assassinate the Queen.”
Chail was charged with the offenses on August 2, 2022 and is due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey on March 31, according to the Metropolitan Police statement.
London Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command Commander Richard Smith said “this was an extremely serious incident.”
The police statement went on to say that prosecutors alleged Chail “harbored ill-feeling towards the British Empire for its past treatment of Indian people.”
Detectives found via surveillance video that Chail had also traveled to Windsor Castle two days before the incident on December 23, it added.
The court heard that Chail was a “Star Wars” fan who described himself as a “Sith” in a video that he sent to about 20 people after breaching the castle grounds, and had been pushed to break into the castle by his AI chatbot “girlfriend,” the UK news agency reported.