A 21-year-old man who armed his way into the grounds of Windsor Castle on Christmas 2021 has pleaded guilty to a plot to attack Queen Elizabeth II. Overall, the young man admitted to three allegations on Friday.
He was caught with a loaded crossbow near the Queen’s private apartments on the morning of December 25, 2021, after climbing onto the premises using a rope ladder. “I’m here to kill the Queen,” he told police officers. The Queen, who has since died, was staying at Windsor Castle at the time.
The maximum penalty under the Treason Act is seven years imprisonment. The corresponding law of 1842 was last applied in 1981. At that time, a man was sentenced to five years in prison for firing multiple shots at Queen Elizabeth II, but missing the queen.
According to the prosecution, the 21-year-old was looking for revenge. In a video that British media showed a few days after the arrest, the man himself had probably announced that he wanted to murder the Queen. In doing so, he is taking revenge for those who were killed, humiliated and discriminated against because of their origin, as well as for the dead of the Amritsar massacre in 1919. At that time, British colonial troops opened fire on demonstrators in the Indian city of Amritsar, killing hundreds. He is an Indian Sikh, says the masked man in the clip.
