Each year, December 25th is a public holiday. Not only that the day is where many Christians celebrate Christmas, as the day is also considered a cultural celebration among billions of people around the world.
And this time, an armed intruder was arrested in the grounds of Windsor Castle in Berkshire, where Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and some members of her family were spending Christmas.
Jaswant Singh Chail, a 19-year-old man from Southampton, was caught wandering within the palace's walls around the garden, after scaling the castle's spiked fences with rope ladder. He was caught on CCTV, within a mere 500 meters from Her Majesty's location in her private apartments, wielding "an offensive weapon."
His unwanted presence was caught on CCTV, who alerted the guards.
According to the police statement, officers from Thames Valley and the Metropolitan Police responded to the security breach within minutes, before the man managed to enter any of the buildings within the complex.
“Morning, can I help, mate?” one of the officers allegedly asked Jaswant , to which Jaswant responded, “I am here to kill the Queen."
"A 19-year-old man from Southampton was arrested on suspicion of breach or trespass of a protected site and possession of an offensive weapon," said the police in a statement. “Following a search of the man, a crossbow was recovered. The man was taken into custody and has undergone a mental health assessment – he has since been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and remains in the care of medical professionals."
"Enquiries into the full circumstances of this incident are being progressed by Metropolitan Police Specialist Operations," the statement added.
It was reportedly that shortly before his assassination attempt, the person has previously sent his followers a video on Snapchat, showing him wielding the crossbow and a Star Wars-inspired mask.
"I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I’ve done and what I will do. I will attempt to assassinate Elizabeth, Queen of the Royal Family," said the masked teenager, while wearing a black hoodie.
"This is revenge for those who have died in the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. It is also revenge for those who have been killed, humiliated and discriminated on because of their race. I’m an Indian Sikh, a Sikh. My name was Jaswant Singh Chail, my name is Darth Jones," he said.
The person referred his intention to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II was because of the massacre that took place at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar during the Baisakhi festival in April 1919. At the time, the British Indian Army under the command of Colonel Reginald Dyer opened fire at a crowd staging a pro-independence demonstration, leaving many people dead.
The man was on a suicide mission, knowing that he could die in the process. This is because he had a note on him, which said:
"Please don’t remove my clothes, shoes and gloves, masks etc, don’t want post-mortem, don’t want embalming, thank you and I‘m sorry."
Soon after he was caught, the Metropolitan Police said that the suspect has been sectioned under the UK’s Mental Health Act after a mental health assessment and remains "in the care of medical professionals."
Following his arrest, Scotland Yard officers started investigating the video.
The police realized that the video was supposedly shared with his friends from his Snapchat account 24 minutes before armed officers arrested him on the Windsor Castle's grounds.
Police are also carrying out searches at a housing estate in Southampton, where the suspect reportedly lived with his family.
The incident happened when the 95-year-old monarch was celebrating Christmas at Windsor Castle, after making the decision not to travel to Sandringham, her usual Christmas destination, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In her apartments, she was with her son, Charles, Prince of Wales, and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.
She was having her annual Christmas Day, but dedicating much of the tradition to address Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, her husband of 73 years who died in April at the age of 99.
While not common, intrusions into Royal palaces do occasionally happen.
While in all cases Queen Elizabeth II was unharmed, the intrusions sparked serious questions about the palace security, especially when it emerged that her repeated attempts to summon help were ignored.
In this case, the 19-year-old teen who allegedly grew up in a £500,000 semi-detached house located on a private estate, said that he did not expect to survive the attack on the Queen.
"Something’s gone horribly wrong with our son and we are trying to figure out what," said the suspect's father, Jasbir Singh Chail. "We’ve not had a chance to speak to him but are trying to get him the help he needs."
"From our perspective, we are going through a difficult time. We are trying to resolve this issue and it’s not easy."
In 2022, Jaswant Singh Chail was charged after a more than seven-month investigation by counter-terrorism police, the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced.
Charges included making threats to kill, and the possession of an offensive weapon.
But what made this case unique is that, Jaswant was also charged under section 2 of the 1842 Treason Act, which addresses “punishment for discharging or aiming fire-arms, or throwing or using any offensive matter or weapon, with intent to injure or alarm her Majesty.”
Under the U.K.’s Treason Act of 1842, it’s illegal to commit assault or attempt it, to threaten the Queen with a weapon and to endanger peace.
This charge is rarely used, and stemmed from the fact that Jaswant being “arrested in the grounds of Windsor Castle on 25 December 2021 carrying a crossbow," prosecutors said.
The 180-year-old Treason Act was last used in 1981, when Marcus Sarjaent was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to firing blank shots to the Queen during her parade.
In 2023, Jaswant pleaded guilty to three charges, including treason and possession of an offensive weapon, at a hearing at London’s Old Bailey court in 2023, following an investigation by the London Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command.
He is understood to have sent the threat video to about 20 people "claiming he was going to attempt to assassinate the Queen."
Evidence showed that Jaswant traveled to Windsor Castle two days before the incident on December 23, and that he allegedly tried applying to join the Ministry of Defense Police and the Grenadier Guards, just to get close to the royal family.
The police said that "this was an extremely serious incident," and that the prosecutors alleged Jaswant "harbored ill-feeling towards the British Empire for its past treatment of Indian people."
It's worth noting that an older Treason Act of 1351 was more extreme in the sense that all assaults against a monarch were punishable by death. The last time someone was convicted under the more serious 1351 act was in 1946, when William Joyce was hanged for broadcasting Nazi propaganda.