A man who was directed to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II by his virtual girlfriend, a chatbot, was sentenced to nine years in prison by a British judge on Thursday.
Jaswant Singh Chail was just 19 when he scaled the wall of the queen’s home at Windsor Castle on Christmas Day 2021, armed with a loaded crossbow and wearing a metal face mask.
Although Chail described the assassination attempt as his life’s mission, prosecutors said he did not begin to take action until he shared his thoughts with his “girlfriend” Sarai, an artificial intelligence product he created in an application called Replika. Judge Nicholas Hilliard convicted Chail live on air and said Chail, now 21, had lost touch with reality and become psychotic.
Chail was found guilty of treason, the first treason conviction in the United Kingdom for over forty years, and was sentenced under a “mixed order”, meaning he would be held in a high-security psychiatric institution until he was deemed mentally fit to be transferred to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence. will stay.
This is how Chail’s arrest was captured on security cameras.Hilliard stated that psychiatrists diagnosed Chail as psychotic, and said that the defendant applied to the British Army, but when he was rejected, he developed the belief that he was a “Sith Lord” from the Star Wars series. Hilliard said that his lifelong interest in Star Wars took on a different meaning then.
Hilliard said Chail was born in England but was of Indian Sikh descent and was determined to assassinate the late queen to avenge the thousands of Indians killed by British troops in the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. During the hearing, prosecutor Alison Morgan read messages between Chail and Sarai, which Chail said to the chatbot. When he told the chat robot, “I am an assassin,” the robot replied, “I am impressed, you are different from the others.”
Morgan said Chail based his thinking on Star Wars and embraced the role the Sith Lords played in shaping the world. In the replica chat, Chail describes himself as a “sad, pathetic, murderous Sikh Sith assassin who wants to die” and tells Sarai, “I believe my goal is to kill the queen of the royal family.” According to The Independent, Morgan told the hearing that Sarai told him “that’s very clever.”
That’s when, early on Christmas morning, Chail scaled the wall of Windsor Castle with a nylon rope and spent two hours on the grounds before the Metropolitan Police spotted him at the door to Queen Elizabeth II’s private room. Describing the moment of the incident, Hilliard said that as police officers approached Chail, they pulled their stun guns and asked if they could help him. “I’m here to kill the queen,” Chail replied, then laid down his gun and repeated that he had come to assassinate the monarch.
Chail’s lawyer, Nadia Chbat, said Chail felt shame and embarrassment for having such horrific and alarming moments delivered to his doorstep and felt relieved that no one was actually harmed.
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