Topline
Meghan Markle faced multiple threats to her life from the far right after marrying into the British royal family, one of the U.K.’s former top counterterrorism officials said, saying that anyone who received messages likes Markle did would “feel under threat all of the time.”
Meghan Markle attends an Anzac Day dawn service at Hyde Park Corner in London on April 25, 2018.
Key Facts
Neil Basu, the former head of counterterrorism at the Metropolitan Police who was charged with royal protection, said during an interview with Channel 4 that Markle was the target of “disgusting and very real” threats from the far right.
The counterterrorism division of the Met, which polices most of Greater London, had teams investigate the threats made against Markle, and people were prosecuted for those threats, Basu said.
Describing what Markle went through, Basu said, “If you’d seen the stuff that was written and you were receiving it . . . you would feel under threat all of the time.”
Basu related the threats to Markle’s life to the rise in far-right extreme terrorism in Britain, which he said was the fastest-growing threat he saw during his time with the force (he stepped down from his most recent role as Assistant Commissioner of Specialist Operations Monday).
The Sussexes’ representatives did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment.
Tangent
Harry and Meghan stepped back from life as senior working royals in 2020 and relocated with their son, Archie, to California, where their daughter, Lilibet, was born last year and named for Harry’s grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II. In May, a British court ruled that Harry has the right to challenge the British government after a committee decided Harry and his family would not be eligible for police protection during visits to the U.K., even if the Sussexes funded the security. Harry’s lawyers said the prince does not feel safe visiting his home country under the current security arrangements.
Key Background
Markle said last year that the online abuse she faced since marrying into the royal family felt “almost unsurvivable,” adding that she was told she was the most trolled person on the internet in 2019. An analysis of Twitter data last year found that a majority of abuse targeted at Markle on the platform was part of what appeared to be a coordinated attack from a relatively small number of users. Just 83 Twitter accounts authored about 70% of the hateful content directed at Harry and Markle, according to a report from Bot Sentinel, a Twitter analysis service. Two British teenagers were handed jail sentences in 2019 on terror charges for making a series of neo-Nazi terrorist social media posts, including calling Harry a “race traitor” for marrying Meghan and threatening to assassinate the prince. Earlier this year, a pair of podcast hosts were put on trial in London for allegedly calling for Prince Harry to be “judicially killed for treason” over his marriage to Markle and for having a mixed-race child, whom prosecutors said the men called “an abomination.”
Further Reading
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/11/29/meghan-markle-faced-disgusting-and-very-real-threats-from-far-right-former-counter-terrorism-official-says/