The hooded and masked intruder who busted in Windsor Castle with a high-powered crossbow on Christmas Day had filmed a video bragging of his plans to “assassinate” Queen Elizabeth II, a court heard Wednesday.
Jaswant Singh Chail, 20, recorded the video just before he entered the castle grounds — while the 96-year-old monarch was inside celebrating the holiday, prosecutors told London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
“I am sorry for what I have done and what I will do. I am going to attempt to assassinate Elizabeth, queen of the royal family,” he said in the video, in which he was seen holding a crossbow and wearing a terrifying-looking face covering.
“This is revenge for those who died in the 1919 massacre,” Chail said, referring to an incident when British troops shot dead nearly 400 Sikhs in their holy city of Amritsar in northwestern India.
“It is also revenge for those who have been killed, humiliated and discriminated on because of their race,” he said in the video.
Chail managed to get to an area where he would have access to the private quarters of the castle — where the queen was celebrating with her eldest son, heir apparent Prince Charles — before he was spotted at 8:10 a.m. by a royal protection officer, the court heard.
“I am here to kill the queen,” he allegedly told the cop, who immediately drew a Taser and ordered the intruder to drop to his knees, prosecutors said.
The officer described Chail as looking like something out of a vigilante film or dressed for Halloween, and the “Supersonic X-bow” he had on him is capable of fatal injuries, the prosecution said.
Searches of Chail’s home in Southampton also found a gas mask and rope, the court was told.
His electronic devices also showed he’d applied to the UK’s Ministry of Defence and the Grenadier Guards in an effort to make contact with the royal family, the court heard.
Chail is charged under the Treason Act with intending to “injure the person of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, or to alarm her Majesty.” He has also been charged with threats to kill and possession of an offensive weapon.
He was not asked to enter a plea at Wednesday’s hearing, where he appeared remotely from Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric hospital.
He was ordered detained until his next court appearance on Sept. 14.
Charges under the Treason Act of 1842 are rare. In 1981, Marcus Sarjeant was charged under the act after firing blank shots at the queen as she rode on horseback in the Trooping the Color parade in London. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison.
A more serious and even older Treason Act — from 1351 — has not been used since World War II, when William Joyce, a propagandist nicknamed Lord Haw Haw, collaborated with the Nazis. He was hanged in 1946.
Indians have long demanded a formal apology from Britain for what is also known as the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, when British troops opened fire on unarmed civilians who had gathered to protest against a colonial law.
Queen Elizabeth II laid a wreath at the site of the massacre during a visit to India in 1997 and referred to it as a “distressing example” of “difficult episodes” in the past.
With Post wires