A man who acknowledged trying to kill the late Queen Elizabeth II after being discovered on the grounds of Windsor Castle with a loaded crossbow was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday.
Jaswant Singh Chail, 21, will spend the initial part of his sentence in the high-security Broadmoor psychiatric hospital before being transferred to prison when his mental condition allows.
“He had lost touch with reality to the point where he had become psychotic,” said sentencing judge Nicholas Hilliard at London’s Old Bailey court.
Chail stated to an armed officer on the scene that he was there “to kill the queen” after breaking into the grounds of the queen’s house on Christmas Day 2021.
In a journal, he wrote that if he could not get the monarch, he would “go for” the “prince” as a “suitable figurehead”, in an apparent reference to her son, the current King Charles III.
Chail previously pled guilty to three crimes, becoming the first person in the UK in decades to admit treason.
In the most recent such case, Briton Marcus Sarjeant received a five-year prison sentence in 1981 after pleading guilty to shooting blank bullets at the queen during a horseback parade in central London.
Chail, who was dressed in black combat pants and a black top when he appeared in court on Thursday, also pleaded to making death threats and possessing an offensive weapon.
Chatbot Relationship
Chail, according to Judge Hilliard, was “informed by the fantasy world of Star Wars” and carried out the planned attack while wearing an iron mask and wielding a loaded crossbow.
According to the judge, Chail also claimed he was conversing with an angel via an AI chatbot and planned the attack in retaliation for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh murder of Indians by British colonial troops.
Alison Morgan, the prosecutor, had earlier stated that “in addition to that fixation with a real historic event, the defendant demonstrated a wider ideology focused on destroying old empires spilling over into fictional events such as Star Wars” .
Following his arrest, it was revealed that he had announced his plan in a video taken four days earlier and transmitted to his phone contacts list just 10 minutes before he was detained.
After a year of worsening health, Queen Elizabeth died peacefully over nine months later, on September 8, aged 96.
Chail’s incursion occurred while the queen was spending Christmas Day with Charles and Camilla at Windsor Castle.
The would-be assassin had scaled the perimeter of the grounds with a nylon rope ladder while clothed in black and wearing a hood, gloves, and a metal mask.
He was in the grounds for around two hours before being detained without resistance.
The crossbow in his possession was loaded and ready to fire, with its safety catch in the “off” position, according to the prosecutors.
Chail had previously applied to join the Ministry of Defence Police and the Grenadier Guards, in a bid to get close to the royal family, the court previously heard.
In the video shared with his contacts on Snapchat prior to entering the castle grounds, Chail said he was “sorry for what I’ve done and what I will do”.
“I will attempt to assassinate Elizabeth, Queen of the Royal Family,” he stated, referencing the 1919 massacre in India.
The death toll from that massacre remains disputed but hundreds were killed when British troops opened fire on a packed crowd in Amritsar.