May 27, (THEWILL) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States has released a new file revealing an assassination attempt on the late Queen Elizabeth II, during her visit to California, in 1983.
The monarch was preparing to undertake an official visit to the United States with her late husband, Prince Philip, when the FBI got wind of the plot on February 4, 1983, a month before the visit.
According to the files, which were made available on the Bureau’s information website, the Vault, the threats were made by a man, who sought revenge for his daughter, who was killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet.
The documents were publicly released earlier in the week after a Freedom of Information Act request was filed to the Bureau by US news media following the queen’s death in 2022.
“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,” the 102 paged document read in part.
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 faced several assassination attempts. Most recently in December 2021, a man named Jaswant Singh Chail broke into Windsor Castle with a crossbow and told the 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.
The Queen passed away nine months after the incident, in September 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.
