British man sentenced to 3 years for threatening to kill UK`s Prince Harry

USPA News - A British Muslim convert who walked into a London police station last year and said he wanted to kill Prince Harry, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, was sentenced on Monday to three years in prison, prosecutors said. He had earlier pleaded guilty.

31-year-old Ashraf Islam, who was born as Mark David Townley in Belfast before converting to Islam around 2010, had walked into a police station in the London borough of Hounslow on May 23, 2013. He had arrived at London`s Heathrow Airport earlier that day after a flight from Thailand, although he normally lived in Northern Ireland. "He traveled from the airport to Hounslow where he checked into a local hotel. Later that day he attended Hounslow police station where he spoke to a uniformed police officer and expressed an intention to kill Prince Harry the following day," a Scotland Yard spokesperson said on Monday. Islam was arrested the next day by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service`s (MPS) Counter Terrorism Command (SO15), which seized his laptop and searched his hotel room. No weapons were found during the search but the court heard Islam had discussed plans to take a gun from a royal bodyguard before shooting the Queen`s grandson. Islam was charged on May 25, 2013, with threats to kill Prince Harry and immediately pled guilty. The man was sentenced Monday to three years in prison, even though the judge deemed his plan "vague and unlikely to succeed," but noted that Islam had used his computer to research Prince Harry`s whereabouts. Lawyer Roxanne Morrell said Islam was suffering from a personality disorder, the Daily Mail reported.