Outgoing Met Police assistant commissioner says Duchess of Sussex faced "very real" threats

In an interview with Channel 4 news, Neil Basu, former head of counter-terrorism policing in England and outgoing Met Police assistant commissioner has spoken about the "very real" threats that the Duchess of Sussex faced.

During the interview with Cathy Newman, he said the threats that Harry and Meghan received were "disgusting and very real".

Basu highlighted the threat of extreme right-wing terrorism in the UK and said it was the fastest growing threat. He said that when he started in counter-terrorism in 2015, extreme right-wing terrorism was about 6 per cent of the total workload and when he left around 15 months ago, it was 20 per cent of the workload.

Basu said that there were many serious, credible threats against Meghan from the far-right: "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."

Basu said that teams were investigating genuine threats to Meghan's life and people have been prosecuted for making those threats.

Image: By Northern Ireland Office - https://www.flickr.com/photos/niogovuk/41014635181/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114790520