FBI documents reveal a plot to assassinate Serbian President Vucic

They were kept under lock and key for about 40 years and now FBI files reveal plans for an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth II: a man wanted to use an object that came from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge on the Royal Yacht “Britannia” to wound the Queen in 1983 in California. That is what the American investigative authority feared when it visited the British monarch at the time after a corresponding tip

This is evident from documents that have since been released and were first reported by the BBC on Friday. The warning came from a San Francisco Police Department officer who often frequented an Irish pub in the American metropolis on the West Coast. The pub was therefore regarded as a meeting place for sympathizers of the IRA (Irish Republican Army).

Golden Gate Bridge is temporarily closed

He received a call from a man claiming his daughter had been killed by a rubber bullet during the so-called “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, the police officer said at the time. According to the FBI documents, this man either wanted to commit an assassination attempt from the Golden Gate Bridge or to kill the Queen during her visit to Yosemite National Park.

The pedestrian zone of the bridge in San Francisco was closed as a precaution while the royal yacht was en route, the document also shows.

The FBI was concerned about assassination attempts by supporters of Irish reunification during the Queen’s visit to the United States in 1983. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, civil war raged in Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. The IRA fought loyalist militias, the police and the British Army to force Northern Ireland’s annexation into the Republic of Ireland. Thousands of people died. The royals were not spared either: the uncle of Elizabeth’s husband Prince Philip, Louis Mountbatten, was killed in a bomb attack in 1979.

During her approximately 70-year reign, several planned assassination attempts on the Queen were foiled. Ultimately, Elizabeth II died of natural causes on September 8, 2022 at the age of 96 at her Scottish estate of Balmoral. (t-online, dpa)