PANIC AT THE PALACE: OTHER SECURITY BREACHES AT QUEEN RESIDENCE
It
is not the first time there has been a security breach at Buckingham
Palace, which is meant to be one of the best-guarded buildings in
Britain.
In September 2013, suspected burglar Victor Miller was arrested after being discovered in a royal state room at the palace.
Police
said 37-year-old DJ was found 'in an area currently open to the public
during the day' after scaling a 12ft fence to get inside. He was
arrested for burglary, trespass and criminal damage.
The
intruder is said to have made his way to the State Rooms, where all of
the Queen's priceless paintings by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and
Titian are kept.
Police officers tasered Talhat Rehman to the ground after he brandished knives outside the palace last year
A
security review was launched and Scotland Yard faced a major inquiry
following the break-in, although no members of the royal family were
present at the palace at the time of the incident.
In
another incident, in February 2013, police officers had to subdue a man
with a Taser after he brandished two large kitchen knives outside the
palace gates.
Talhat
Rehman, 54, was filmed holding a blade to his own neck as he walked
through crowds of tourists before police surrounded him and used a Taser
stun gun to disarm him.
As
a policeman shouted a warning call of ‘Taser, Taser, Taser’ to his
colleagues, the knifeman allegedly lunged forward, brandishing a
six-inch blade in a series of swipes, before falling to the floor as he
was stunned by the electrical charge.
Meanwhile,
in another campaign act by fathers’ rights activists, a protester
dressed as Batman crept onto a ledge next to a balcony in the palace
after using a ladder to get over the walls.
Jason
Hatch, a member of the group Fathers4Justice, then unfurled a banner
and spent five hours in full public view before he was arrested by
police. The ease with which he had made it into the palace prompted an
urgent review of Royal security.
Fathers4Justice campaigner Jason Hatch made it on to a prominent spot of Buckingham Palace in 2004
Spectators looked on for five hours before he could be moved away from the precarious spot by police
Last
year, an armed Queen's Guard was forced to raise his rifle at a ranting
would-be intruder outside the palace after he claimed he was expecting
to be ‘welcomed’ inside by the Queen.
The
man, later named as Tosin Odunaiya, a 23-year-old Nigerian who came to
Britain illegally, had been shouting at royal protection officers for
five minutes at the royal residence's north centre gate when the armed
soldier intervened.
Michael Fagan made his way into the Queen's bedroom after breaching the palace in 1982
Witnesses
told how the he strode 50 yards from his post to join the confrontation
with the intruder, who later claimed he was expecting a 'private
audience' with the Queen.
Other breaches at the palace include a 1994 incident when a naked America paraglider was able to land on the building's roof.
The
following year a student rammed the gates at 50mph in his car, while
months later an undercover reporter was given a job as a palace footman
on the strength of a fake CV.
However, the most egregious breach of Royal security was the case of Michael Fagan in 1982.
Fagan,
then 33, managed to scale the walls of the palace on the morning of
July 7, climb a drainpipe and wander the palace before making his way
into the Queen's room.
He
tripped several alarms, all of which were faulty, and was able to swig
from a bottle of wine on his travels through the Royal residence. He was
eventually apprehended by protection officers.
For
a long time it was thought Fagan had been able to chat with the Queen
while in her bedroom, but he later admitted in an interview that she had
called security immediately.
Comments
Post a Comment