Man Who Planned to Kill Queen With Crossbow Jailed for 9 Years
The court heard that Chail was persuaded by his AI chatbot “girlfriend” Sarai and imagined he was in a “Star Wars” plot.

Max Mumby/Indigo
A man who attempted to break into Windsor Castle to assassinate the late Queen Elizabeth II on Christmas Day 2021 with a loaded crossbow has been sentenced to nine years in prison for treason. According to Sky News, the court heard that Jaswant Singh Chail, 21, was persuaded by his artificial intelligence chatbot “girlfriend” Sarai and imagined he was in a Star Wars plot line. Prosecutors claimed that Chail, whose family is of Indian Sikh heritage, formulated his plan in response to the Amritsar massacre of 1919. He had applied for jobs within the Ministry of Defence Police, the British Army, the Grenadier Guards, the Royal Marines, and the Royal Navy to get near the Royal Family. Under the Mental Health Act, Chail will continue his stay at a psychiatric hospital but will later be jailed after receiving treatment. He is the first person in the U.K. to be convicted of treason since 1981 when Marcus Sarjeant fired blank shots at the former queen during a parade. In a televised sentencing, Judge Nicholas Hilliard asserted that Chail had acted on homicidal thoughts before he became psychotic.
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