Personal Life: Assassination Attempts
Assassination Attempts
Given her status as her country's monarch, along with various other factors, since coming to the throne, Alexandra has experienced a number of assassination attempts on her life, neither of which have so far proved successful. The first of these came about on 16 August 2019 during her state visit to Malaysia where a convoy carrying the Queen and her entourage, while en route to the Istana Negara (English: National Palace), was attacked by a lone assassin armed with a handgun. The assassin, who was initially one of the several armed bikers escorting the convoy, was reported to have driven up to the side of the Queen's vehicle before unsuccessfully attempting to assassinate the royal by shooting at the bulletproof windows through the use of a handgun, namely a Colt M1911, which in the end only managed to leave small and minor cracks on the affected window while the Queen herself remained largely unharmed although reportedly "shocked" and "slightly terrified" by the sudden attempt on her life. Ultimately, the assassin, later identified as 33-year-old Anuar Omar, a Major in the elite VAT 69 Commando unit, was promptly immobilised after the driver of the Queen's vehicle veered slightly sideways into the would-be assassin's direction, knocking the latter off his motorcycle and onto the ground where he was soon arrested by nearby authorities while the convoy proceeded without further incident. In a subsequent statement, the Queen revealed that she was "somewhat shaken up" at the sudden sight of a handgun pointed at her face, describing it as "one of the most deathly terrifying moments of my life", while simultaneously expressing some sense of relief at the presence of bulletproof windows which effectively blocked any incoming bullets, thereby saving her life.
Following this, a subsequent report by the Malaysian news outlet The Star revealed that a follow-up police interrogation of the suspect found that the man had intended to assassinate the British monarch given her Jewish background and her perceived support for Israel whose decades-long conflict with the Palestinians and perceived illegitimacy in the eyes of Malaysian society is a major sensitive issue among the country's Muslim majority. Following this, controversy emerged over whether the man would be trialed under a Malaysian court given the location of the incident or under a British court instead given that the intended target is the head of state of the United Kingdom. Eventually, on August 24th, the dispute was resolved when, following the precedent established by the trial of the Lockerbie bombing perpetrators, a treaty was struck between the British and Malaysian governments whereby Anuar Omar would be put to trial by a British court in a Malaysian territory that would be temporarily leased to the British for the duration of the trial for which the chosen location was a former Royal Malaysian Air Force base, namely the RMAF Kuala Lumpur Air Base.
On 5 October 2019, following a month-long trial and after all further appeals from the defendant's relatives were rejected by the courts, Anuar Omar was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in a British prison. Following this, amidst calls from some local politicians for either his release, a more lenient sentence, or for him to serve his sentence in a Malaysian prison instead, Anuar was promptly extradited to the United Kingdom where he began serving his sentence at the Category A HM Prison Frankland in County Durham, England. In May 2021, the Malaysian government under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin filed a request seeking an early release but was rejected by the Supreme Court on the grounds of "national security risks", prompting the Malaysian Islamist politician Abdul Hadi Awang to liken the would-be assassin's indefinite sentence at a British prison to the "cruel subjugation of Palestinians in Israeli prisons by Zionist forces", a remark that was promptly rebuked by Supreme Court President The Lord Reed of Allermuir who criticised the "glorification of a violent man with malicious intent to cause physical harm under a judgment driven entirely by racial prejudice". Later on, in November 2022, following his election as prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, whom Alexandra had previously voiced her support for following his second arrest in 2015, expressed his rejection of any further moves seeking for the would-be assassin's release, stating, "Beyond all the emotion and rhetoric, what happened in August 2019 was a clear-cut case of attempted murder, namely towards another country's head of state, an act that must be punished accordingly to the full extent of the law. No matter the motivation, acts of violence from either Muslims or non-Muslims are absolutely unacceptable and must not be tolerated nor encouraged by anyone".
Similarly, another assassination attempt would come about during her July 2021 state visit to the United States where, much like the previous case in Malaysia, a heavily armed convoy carrying the Queen and Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris down a street in Montana was attacked by a pair of gunmen, later identified as brothers, Joel and Tyler Perry. According to official reports, the brothers, seated in a white Toyota sedan, suddenly drove onto the path of the oncoming convoy and proceeded to open fire using their respective Colt AR-15 rifles although none of the rounds fired were able to cause any serious harm towards either of the occupants with the brothers themselves subsequently fleeing the scene in haste, leading to a roughly fifteen-minute-long police chase that ultimately ended in the brothers' death after their car eventually crashed into a nearby tree, killing both brothers instantly. Then, while the Queen herself proceeded with the rest of her state visit and subsequently departed the United States without further incident, a subsequent investigation launched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that the monarch had been the target of an ideologically-driven assassination plot based on pieces of evidence found at a discreet ranch belonging to the brothers that, according to Director Christopher A. Wray, "showed signs that the Perry brothers were motivated by a supposed grand conspiracy deeply rooted in blatant anti-Semitism that seemingly justified their supposedly necessary attempt to assassinate a foreign head of state, one that happens to be of Jewish ancestry". In response, Alexandra herself promptly issued a statement thanking the FBI's efforts in the investigation while also publicly condemning "those responsible for such a vile act and those who, by nature, would be in support of such violent and uncivilised acts", a remark believed to be subtly targeting supporters of former President Donald Trump, of whom she had been highly critical.
On 3 February 2023, the BBC reported that Jaswant Singh Chail, a British national of Sikh ancestry, had confessed to charges of treason, which were first brought against him after his arrest on Christmas Day 2021, in which Chail was arrested by security forces while attempting to breach Buckingham Palace, where the Queen and her family had been spending Christmas, with the stated intention of killing the British monarch. Then, when further questioned behind his reasoning for doing so, Chail claimed that his assassination attempt, which he had planned to execute using a loaded crossbow, was intended as an act of revenge for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre where hundreds of Indian civilians were shot to death by soldiers of the British Raj. Meanwhile, following the news report, Buckingham Palace then published a statement expressing its "greatest relief in the fact that justice was served" while the Queen herself later said that although she had "frankly forgotten about the whole murder attempt until now", she was nonetheless "very proud" of the officers present who swiftly took care of the problem, thereby ensuring that no one was ever hurt in the process.