Muslim Convert Jailed Over Plot to Kill British Royal

A British convert to Islam was sentenced to three years in prison on Monday after pleading guilty to a plot to kill Prince Harry, British media reported.

Ashraf Islam (Photo: Metropolitan Police via British media)

Ashraf Islam, who was born Mark David Townley, believed he had a “moral right to judge” the prince, because he disagreed with the mission of the British Armed Forces where Prince Harry serves, the Guardian reported.

Islam arrived at a police station in west London last May and voluntarily said he was intending to kill Prince Harry the next day, Reuters reported. He pleaded guilty in May to making a threat to kill the British royal.

When police searched his hotel room, they confiscated his laptop computer but found no weapon. Islam, 31, had just arrived from Thailand and did not have a permanent address

In court on Monday, Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson called Islam’s plot “vague and unlikely to succeed.” Still, the Isleworth Crown Court judge believed him to pose a danger to the public.

"This was not a threat made in isolation,” the judge further said according to Britain’s Sky News. "The examination of your computer revealed you conducted research on his (Prince Harry's) whereabouts and intentions.”

"You had given the matter considerable thought,” McGregor-Johnson said at Monday’s hearing. "The reason behind that is that you thought he and other serving officers had some moral guilt, and you thought you had a moral right to judge.”

Even so, the judge said a sentence longer than three years would have been “excessive.”

Prince Harry visited wounded warriors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C. in May 2013 (Photo: Bernard S. Little, Walter Reed National Military Center via Flickr)

"I accept that there is nothing here that could be described as professional plans as to your expressed intentions," the judge said.

Islam had previously been convicted over an attempted robbery and changed his name several years ago after converting to Islam.

Defense counsel Roxanne Morrell said that her client had a personality disorder, the Guardian reported.

Prince Harry, a military helicopter pilot, is a captain in the British Army who has served twice in Afghanistan.

Reuters reported that Islam made his threat against Harry one day after soldier Lee Rigby was gruesomely hacked to death by two British Muslim converts in London.