Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was a 20-year-old and Royal Navy trainee helicopter pilot when he watched the six-day hostage situation unfold on TV – and now it has emerged he asked to visit
The former Prince Andrew asked to visit the Iranian Embassy siege in 1980(Image: Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)
The former Prince Andrew asked to visit the 1980 Iranian embassy siege while Scotland Yard was at the height of delicate negotiations to free 26 hostages.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was then 20 years old and a trainee Royal Navy helicopter pilot when he watched the six-day hostage situation unfold live on television.
On Day Five, Inspector Peter Prentice, a member of the Royal Protection Unit, contacted the ‘Zulu control’ set up to negotiate with the six heavily armed gunmen who had burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate in London.
The siege was in its most intense period of negotiation as the captors had killed one of the hostages and dumped his body outside on the steps of the embassy.
The SAS go into the Iranian embassy in 1980(Image: ZAB)
The tense hostage situation ended when the SAS stormed the building, an event millions around the world watched live on television.
Andrew wished to be ‘allowed to visit the scene’, according to accounts given to author Ben Macintyre for his book ‘The Siege’. Prentice explained that the former Prince, then second in line to the throne, “would like to come to lunch.”
The former Prince Andrew at Wimbledon(Image: Ian Volger/ Daily Mirror)
John Dellow the Scotland Yard commander in charge of the police operation denied the request “on the grounds of safety.” He passed it to then-Commissioner David McNee. But Andrew said he did not want to see McNee.
He wanted to be “where the action was”, so he sent another message an hour after his original request. “Prince Andrew had not given up,” Macintyre recounts in the book.
“An hour after a request for a visit was denied, the persistent Prince sent another message. ‘It was suggested on his behalf that he could attend incognito.'”
Hostage negotations in the Iranian embassy siege(Image: Getty Images)
The idea was described as ‘absurd, an unnecessary distraction and pointless’, and Dellow sent a message which amounted to ‘a two fingered salute to the Palace’.
It stated that ‘HRH would be informed as soon as the operation was complete so that he could attend if he so wished….one hour after its conclusion’.
The then-Prince arrived at 19:55 on Day Six of the siege after the SAS operation left five gunmen dead.
The Iranian dissident group killed two of the hostages before the SAS intervened. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, accompanied by her husband Denis, met the SAS rescuers shortly after the 11-minute operation concluded.
The ‘air was thick with testosterone,’ according to one Cabinet official present. “Most of them appeared to have slightly ginger hair and moustaches and bottles of beer in their hands,” he added.
