London Police have arrested, during the night of Friday to Saturday, a man who tried to break into the royal stables on the grounds of Buckingham Palace. “At 01:25 (0025 GMT) on Saturday 16 September, officers from Buckingham Palace detained an individual who was climbing the wall to enter the royal stables,” Scotland Yard said in a statement.
This “25-year-old man was arrested by officers outside the royal stables. At no time did the man enter Buckingham Palace or the palace gardens,” police said. He was arrested for “trespassing” and taken into custody at a London police station, where he is still being held, he said.
Despite the reinforced security around the place, attempted intrusions at Buckingham Palace, the royal residence in the heart of London, as well as at Windsor Castle, located west of the capital, are not exceptional.
The most spectacular dates back to 1982, in Buckingham, when a thirty-year-old man, Michael Fagan, managed to force his way into the bedroom of the queen who was in bed.
In 2021, a man suffering from mental problems was seen climbing the grounds of Royal Mews and shortly afterwards walking back to the street. He was quickly arrested with cocaine and a kitchen knife on him.
And a man, Jaswant Singh Chail, is currently on trial in London for entering Windsor Castle on Christmas Day 2021 armed with a crossbow with the intention of “killing the queen”, he claimed at the time of his arrest. The queen, who died last year at the age of 96, was then in the castle where she spent the New Year’s holidays.
Prosecuted under the extremely rarely used ‘Treason Act’, he pleaded guilty, meaning a trial is not necessary and a judge will soon have to decide on his sentence.