British police counter-terrorism division commander Neil Basu said 41-year-old Meghan Markle had received “disgusting” death threats from racist groups when she was an active member of the British royal family.
Basu, Britain’s top ethnic minority police officer, has admitted that since taking office he has faced real threats from the far right against the Duchess of Sussex and her husband Prince Harry, their youngest son of the current King Charles III.
These statements were made in an interview with the British channel Channel 4 on Tuesday night reinforced Harry, 38,’s fears about the safety of the former actress, who he married in 2018.
Under pressure from the British tabloid press and a hostile environment towards Meghan, the couple left the royal family in 2020 and moved to the United States.
Basu, who will soon step down after 30 years at Scotland Yard, said the death threats against the Duchess were “disgusting and very real”. “We had teams to investigate them and there were people who were prosecuted because of these threats”he added.
Harry publicly criticized some media outlets’ coverage of Meghan, condemning “blatant racism on social media and comments in articles on the internet”.
The couple even accused an unknown member of the royal family of racism themselves, in an explosive 2021 interview with American television star Oprah Winfrey.
Basu, whose father is Indian, also criticized the “terrible” rhetoric about migrants from some prominent Asian-American conservative politicians.
Ultra-Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman has described Albanians seeking asylum in Britain as “criminals”.
Braverman, who is also of Indian descent, is defending a controversial plan by the British government to deport migrants and refugees arriving illegally in the UK to Rwanda, an African country 4,000 miles from London. The project has been denounced by several organizations and is currently being analyzed by the judiciary.
For Basu, this speech is “inexplicable”. “It is shocking to hear powerful politicians give a speech that would bring back memories of my father in 1968″he said, referring to a speech by Conservative MP Enoch Powell about the so-called race war in the UK caused by immigration. “I talk about racial issues because (…) I am a 54-year-old mixed-race man,” Basu said, acknowledging that this may have prevented him from being appointed as head of the National Crime Agency.
Source: DN
