bitchy | Times: Prince Harry requested police protection after al-Qaeda threats

Last week, Prince Harry attended his two-day court appeal of his security case in the UK. There was a hearing which was open to the public, then there was a private, in-camera portion heard in judge’s chambers, or whatever they call it in the UK. We knew that the private part of the hearing involved sensitive security information, and when Harry spoke to the Telegraph and People Magazine last week, he said “People would be shocked by what’s being held back” in the case and that his worst fears were confirmed by what he’s discovered. Well, now the British press has an update on what went down in camera last week:

The Duke of Sussex requested police protection after al-Qaeda murder threats when his automatic right to taxpayer-funded security was removed, a court hearing was told behind closed doors. Harry’s lawyer told part of a Court of Appeal hearing held in public last week that the duke’s life was “at stake” after the refusal by the royal security committee to guarantee police protection during visits to the UK.

He travelled from California to attend the two-day challenge of the home secretary — several hours of which were held in-camera during evidence on security matters.

Al-Qaeda called for Harry, who served with the British Army in Afghanistan, “to be murdered” and his security team was told that the group had published a document saying that his “assassination would please the Muslim community”, the court was told.

A summary of the private portion of the hearing, released on Thursday, stated: “[Harry] confirmed that he had requested certain protection after a threat was made against him by al-Qaeda.” The duke’s lawyers also claimed there was “no good reason” for the royal and VIP executive committee (Ravec) to depart from its normal process by not asking its “risk management board” of experts to carry out a security assessment.

A security risk analysis in April 2019 led to Harry receiving the recommended “protective security” until early 2020, when he stopped being a full-time working member of the royal family and moved abroad. He sought to pay for that protective security himself but was not allowed to do so, the court was told. Harry said the decision by Sir Richard Mottram, then chairman of Ravec, not to order a security analysis was “not logical” and inconsistent with the position of others in the category of “Other VIP”.

A ruling on the appeal is expected within weeks. The losing party faces a legal bill of £1.5 million.

I can already predict what the response will be from the Windsors and their royalist creatures: that Harry’s security should not be guaranteed because he “chose” to write about his experiences in war in his memoir, and Spare is the reason why al-Qaeda threatened him. That’s what they’ll blame this on: a memoir he wrote in part to make money to fund his family’s private security. Private security which was needed after his father withdrew the royal protection deal worked out at the Sandringham Summit. But I digress – the royalist argument of “he’s under threat because of Spare” falls flat because Harry and Meghan were both under threat from terrorists and extremists long before Spare was published in January 2023. That’s why Harry is making such a big deal about how their security was yanked in 2020 without any proper threat assessment – because the “security issue” wasn’t actually tied to the very real threats to the Sussexes’ lives, it was tied to the internal personal politics of the monarchy.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.