Police have investigated many “disgusting” and “very real” threats to the Duchess of Sussex, the former head of UK counter-terror policing has said.
There has “absolutely” been a genuine threat to Meghan Markle’s life on multiple occasions, and people have been prosecuted as a result, said Neil Basu, the most senior police officer of colour in the country.
“If you’d seen the stuff that was written and you were receiving it … the kind of rhetoric that’s online, if you don’t know what I know, you would feel under threat all of the time,” Mr Basu told Channel 4 News, adding: “We had teams of people investigating it.”
Ms Markle became the subject of racist and sexist abuse after her relationship with the Duke of Sussex was made public, and Prince Harry was quickly forced to issue a sharp statement condemning the vitriol against her in tabloid coverage and on social media.
Security concerns have been of paramount concern to the couple, particularly since stepping back as senior royals, and in their interview with Oprah Winfrey last March, Ms Markle alleged that she had personally pleaded with the royal family not to remove Prince Harry’s security detail.
In one instance investigated as a racist hate crime by police in 2018, the couple were sent white powder claimed to be anthrax in a malicious hoax. The following year, two neo-Nazis were jailed after inciting terror attacks on targets including Prince Harry, who was branded a “race traitor” in offending online material.
Elsewhere in his interview with Channel 4, which took place hours before leaving the Metropolitan Police after 30 years in the force, Mr Basu also condemned home secretary Suella Braverman’s “horrific” language around immigration, saying it revived memories of the violent racism his parents endured after Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech.
“I find some of the commentary coming out of the Home Office inexplicable,” he said, adding: “It is unbelievable to hear a succession of very powerful politicians who look like this talking in language that my father would have remembered from the 1968. It’s horrific.”
Mr Basu recalled his parents being stoned in the streets in the wake of the infamous speech, which Powell gave in “the constituency next to where my parents lived. It “made their life hell”, he said. “A mixed-race couple walking through the streets in the 1960s. Stoned.”
Mr Basu, who served as an assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, also alleged that Downing Street has “interfered” in him being appointed to certain positions, when asked why he believes he was overlooked for the role as head of the National Crime Agency earlier this year.
“The reason for that, I have not been told. I would surmise – and people who know me surmise – that it is because I've been outspoken about issues that do not fit with the current political administration,” he said. “They are wrong. Diversity and inclusion are two of the most important things for policing.”
No 10 said in a statement that the recruitment campaign for the top NCA role was “fair and open”, adding: ““This is a statutory decision for the home secretary, following consultation with the Scottish ministers and the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland, in accordance with the Crime and Courts Act 2013.”
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