The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a new file that told the story of how an assassination attempt on the late Queen Elizabeth II, during her visit to California in 1983 was quelled.
The FBI learned of the plot on February 4, 1983, a month before the monarch and her late husband, Prince Philip, were scheduled to make an official visit to the United States.
The threats were made by a man seeking retribution for his daughter who was ‘killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet,’ according to the documents that were made accessible on the Bureau’s information website, the Vault.
Following a Freedom of Information Act request made to the Bureau by US news media following the queen’s passing last year, the documents were made publicly available earlier this week.
The 102-paged document which was obtained by Africa Today News, New York read in part, ‘He was going to attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth and would do this either by dropping some object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the Royal Yacht Britannia when it sails underneath, or would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite National Park.’
In response, the Secret Service had planned to close the walkways on the Golden Gate Bridge when the yacht carrying the queen neared the spot. Despite the threat her Majesty made the visit without any recorded hitches.
Throughout her decades-long reign the Queen has faced several assassination attempts. Most recently in December 2021, a man named Jaswant Singh Chail, broke into Windsor Castle with a crossbow and told police he was there to kill the monarch.
Less than an hour before his arrest, Chail, who was 19 at the time, shared a TikTok video of himself stating his plans to take revenge for the colonial-era Amritsar massacre of 1919 in India.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that the Queen died nine months after the incident, on September 8, 2022.
Chail was arraigned in February 2023, and pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to “injure the person of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, making threats to kill, and possessing an offensive weapon.