Windsor Castle intruder charged with threatening queen

An intruder busted with a crossbow in Windsor Castle on Christmas Day was charged under Britain’s rarely used Treason Act on Tuesday with trying to “injure or alarm” Queen Elizabeth II.

Jaswant Singh Chail, 20, was arrested on castle grounds while the 96-year-old Queen was inside with her eldest son, heir apparent Prince Charles, and other close family members, officials previously said.

Chail was charged Tuesday 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 possession of an offensive weapon, said Nick Price, head of the CPS’ Counter Terrorism Division.

He 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.”

The rarely used charge stemmed from Chail being “arrested in the grounds of Windsor Castle on 25 December 2021 carrying a crossbow,” Price confirmed in a statement Tuesday.

Chail, from Southampton, remains in custody and will appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Aug. 17, officials confirmed.

The incident happened as the Queen spent a low-key Christmas Day at Windsor Castle with Charles and his wife, Camilla.

She would traditionally have celebrated at her Sandringham estate but remained in Windsor as a precautionary measure amid resurgent COVID-19 cases at the time.

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 at the Queen when she was on parade.

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.

With Post wires