Prince Harry was allowed to leave his RAF base when drugs testers turned up: Royal – who has admitted taking cocaine – raced back to London for ‘urgent business’ during unannounced inspection despite only just returning from William and Kate’s wedding
- RAF Wittisham in Suffolk was reportedly secured by armed guards in May 2011
- Every cadet, junior and senior, was required to provide a urine sample, bar Harry
- The royal is said to have left in his Audi A3 to attend ‘urgent palace business’
- There is no suggestion Harry purposefully skipped the test or that he took drugs
Prince Harry was permitted to leave his Apache helicopter base on ‘urgent palace business’ when it was put on lockdown for a spot drugs test, it has been claimed.
RAF Wittisham in Suffolk was reportedly secured by armed guards in May 2011 before all cadets, junior and senior, were ordered to give urine samples.
But the Duke of Sussex is said to have driven off in his Audi A3 to return to London, after having just come back from his brother Prince William’s wedding.
The now 38-year-old’s former Squadron Sergeant Major Mark ‘Oz’ Wilson, who was in charge of squadron discipline, told the Sun: ‘I couldn’t believe Harry was allowed to leave.’
There is no suggestion Harry purposefully skipped the test or that he took any drugs while serving in the Armed Forces.
Prince Harry was permitted to leave his Apache helicopter base on ‘urgent palace business’ when it was put on lockdown for a spot drugs test, it has been claimed (Pictured: Prince Harry in Afghanistan in 2014)
RAF Wittisham in Suffolk was reportedly secured by armed guards in May 2011 before all cadets, junior and senior, were ordered to give urine samples (Pictured: Harry makes his early morning pre-flight checks at the British controlled flight-line at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province in December 2012)
Major Wilson, 50 – who has since left the Army – added: ‘He had just returned from a period of leave, from being off celebrating Prince William’s wedding.
‘If you miss a test because you are not on camp normally you have to book a test ASAP at the next location you are going to.’
Harry is believed to have been the only serviceperson not tested on the base. He was serving with 656 Squadron, 4 Regiment Army Air Corps at the time.
An Army source added that it ‘would have looked very strange to his comrades’.
However they said: ‘You can’t expect soldiers and sergeant majors to be aware of the diary pressures on the third in line to the throne.’
A Ministry of Defence Spokesperson said: ‘Every member of the Armed Forces is subject to compulsory drugs testing. We do not comment on individuals.’
MailOnline has contacted representatives for Harry for comment.
A year later, Harry graduated his Apache training and was deployed to Afghanistan, where he claims in his autobiography Spare to have killed 25 Taliban soldiers.
Colonel Tim Collins said Harry had been ‘badly advised’ when he compared the killing of insurgents to removing pieces from a chess board and said it was naive of the Prince to publicise intimate details of his two tours.
He told the Times: ‘The military has always embraced him into the family no matter what had gone on before.
‘He’s now betrayed that trust. I think he’s completely naive. There’s no understanding of what he’s doing or what he’s done’.
Tobias Ellwood, chair of the Defence Select Committee and former British Army captain, added: ‘here should be no pride taken in scalps accumulated in any battles.
‘From a security perspective, there is the unwritten assumption that nobody publicly discusses kill counts for the principal reason that it can have security repercussions.’
It comes as the Taliban yesterday branded Prince Harry a ‘big mouth loser’ after he revealed he killed dozens of their fighters while serving in Afghanistan in his new tell-all memoir.
Speaking to MailOnline, the militants taunted the Duke of Sussex – who wrote that he viewed their fighters as ‘chess pieces’ – saying they had had the last laugh over the West after recapturing the country in 2021.
The Taliban claimed while their fighters are the ultimate victors of the conflict, Harry had ‘fled to his grandmother’s palace’ and is now struggling to maintain a place in the Royal Family.
Harry, who was known as ‘Captain Wales’ in the military, wrote that he did not think of those killed ‘as people’ but instead ‘chess pieces’ he had taken off the board.
‘You can’t kill people if you see them as people’, he wrote. Instead, he said he saw them as ‘chess pieces removed from the board’… as ‘bad guys eliminated’.
Harry spent a decade in the British Army before taking up full-time royal duties in 2015. During that time, he did two tours of Afghanistan.
The prince was first deployed to Helmand province as a forward air controller in 2007, but his first tour of duty was cut short.
He returned in 2012, by which time he was responsible for firing a £45million Apache helicopter’s 30mm cannon and Hellfire missiles.
Spare is the first time that Harry, 38, has specified the number of insurgents he personally killed during his time in Afghanistan. The Prince said that he flew on six missions that resulted in the ‘taking of human lives’ in his autobiography.
While many soldiers do not know how many enemies they have killed in combat, the Duke wrote that ‘in the era of Apaches and laptops’ he was able to say ‘with exactness’ the number of insurgents he killed.
The Duke of Sussex, pictured in Afghanistan in 2012, sparked fury after claiming that he killed 25 Taliban fighters
Taliban fighters, pictured last year, said that they had had the last laugh over the West after recapturing the country in 2021
Prince Harry claimed in his memoir Spare (pictured right) that he killed 25 Taliban fighters during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan (left)
In his bombshell memoirs, the Duke also admits to taking cocaine a ‘few’ times during his wilder party years.
Writing in the bombshell memoir, which has been released in Spain ahead of its publication in the UK next week, the Duke of Sussex describes being dragged into the office of an unnamed member of the Royal Household staff during his grandmother the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 after a journalist asked the Palace about his drug-taking habits.
Earlier in his autobiography, Harry describes smoking cannabis and boozing – but he has revealed for the first time how he was offered a line of cocaine during a hunting weekend.
Admitting that he lied to the Royal Household staff during his interrogation, Harry says taking cocaine ‘wasn’t much fun’ and did it partly to be different and because he was a ‘seventeen-year-old willing to try almost anything that would upset the established order’.
According to translations obtained by MailOnline and also reported by Sky News, he writes: ‘It wasn’t much fun, and it didn’t make me feel particularly happy the way the others seemed to, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main goal. To feel. To be different.’
Harry also describes smoking cigarettes and cannabis, and drinking at the Windsor Castle golf course, while a student at Eton.
Harry back in 2006 at one of his then favourite nightclubs Boujis in South Kensington, London
Tales of the Duke’s exploits as a ‘party prince’ have been extensively reported over the years. Speaking on Dax Shepard’s podcast in 2021, Harry laughed as he recalled his infamous party trip to Las Vegas which saw naked photos of him leaked to the press.
In 2012, Harry enjoyed a wild weekend in Las Vegas, where he was snapped in just a necklace while a naked girl hid behind him following a game of strip billiards in his VIP suite.
During Dax’s ‘Armchair Expert’ show, the royal was chatting about how people are more likely to run away and rebel after being told ‘you need help’ when the host mentioned the notorious trip, joking: ‘[Or] take your clothes off in Las Vegas’.
Elsewhere in the book he claims he hallucinated that a bin was speaking to him after taking magic mushrooms.
Harry claimed the experience happened at a party with his friends.
Prince Harry has sensationally admitted to taking cocaine several times. Pictured in 2002
Harry and William with their grandmother the Queen during the 2002 Golden Jubilee
The prince said they spied a box of mushroom chocolates in a fridge and decided to eat them before washing them down with tequila.
The trip did not go as intended however, with the duke ending up having a terrifying experience with a bin in the bathroom.
The Sun reported Harry as writing: ‘Beside the toilet was a round silver bin, the kind with a foot pedal to open the lid. I stared at the bin. It stared back. Then it became… a head.
‘I stepped on the pedal and the head opened its mouth. A huge open grin.
‘I laughed, turned away, took a p***. Now the loo became a head too. The bowl was its gaping maw, the hinges of the seat were its piercing silver eyes. It said, ‘Aaah’.’
It comes after the Duke of Sussex claimed that he and his brother begged their father not to marry the now-Queen Consort and that he wondered if she would one day be his ‘wicked stepmother’.
Undated handout photo issued by Penguin Random House of the cover of the Duke of Sussex’s memoir
Harry’s autobiography, Spare, reveals that the royal brothers were aware of Camilla as the ‘other woman’.
Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have declined to comment on the leaked claims from Harry’s book which emerged five days before the explosive, tell-all memoir is due to be published in the UK.
The book includes details of the moment he was introduced to Camilla for the first time.
The duke reportedly claims he and his brother had separate meetings with her before she married the now-King in 2005.
He said seeing her for the first time was like avoiding pain while getting an injection, writing: ‘This is nothing. Close your eyes and you won’t even feel it.’ Harry also alleges that Camilla appeared ‘bored’ during the meeting and thought about whether she would be his ‘wicked stepmother’ in the future.
Harry attending the afterparty at China White’s club at Cartier International Day in 2004
Prince William ‘pointed a finger’ at Meghan and called her ‘rude’ during furious row – click here to read more
Also in the book, the duke claims he and his brother were willing to forgive her if she could make Charles happy, adding: ‘We saw that like us, he wasn’t.
‘We could recognise the absent glances, the empty sighs, the frustration always visible on his face.’
Harry also claims that he and William told Charles they would welcome Camilla into the family on the condition he did not marry her and ‘begged’ him not to do so.
He alleges that his father did not respond to their pleas.
The brothers feared Camilla would be unfairly compared to their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, Harry also claims.
Other revelations from the book include the duke’s claims that a campaign was launched for Charles to marry Camilla and that his stepmother leaked details of her conversation with William to the press.
The Guardian, which said it was able to obtain a copy of Spare despite the tight pre-launch security, reported that Harry claims he was physically attacked by William and knocked to the floor during a furious confrontation over the Duchess of Sussex.
Harry writes: ‘(William) called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.
‘I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.’
Other reported revelations include how the brothers call each other ‘Willy’ and ‘Harold’ and that Charles pleaded with his sons during a tense meeting after the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral: ‘Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery.’
The book comes just weeks after Harry and Meghan’s bombshell Netflix documentary – in which Harry said he was left terrified when William screamed and shouted at him at a tense Sandringham summit in 2020.
Picture dated 12/12/2012 of Harry making his early morning pre-flight checks at Camp Bastion
Prince Harry meeting former Royal Marine Commando Ben McBean
Picture dated 03/11/2012 of Prince Harry (right) in Camp Bastion
It comes as MPs and military chiefs warned Prince Harry has undermined his own security and increased the risk of being targeted by Islamists in future revenge attacks.
Taliban taunts ‘big mouth loser’ Prince Harry after he revealed he killed 25 enemies in Afghanistan
Ex-Army chief Colonel Richard Kemp today warned that Harry’s admissions could cause pro-Taliban sympathisers to be ‘provoked to attempt revenge’ against him and possibly ‘incite some people to attempt an attack on British soldiers anywhere in the world’.
The Duke – who is currently in a legal battle with the Home Office over security in the UK – also faces allegations that he wrote about his kill count in a tactical bid to get police protection when he visits Britain.
Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told MailOnline: ‘This may, of course, be a tactic to get the security he feels he needs when he visits Britain, but it is surely irresponsible. Who is advising him, one wonders.’
He added: ‘It also occurred to me that he might be using this highly unusual admission to pressurise the Home Office into granting him what he wants, either to pay for round-the-clock police protection when he is here, or, alternatively, to be favourably assessed for taxpayer funded security which he lost when he and Meghan stepped down as senior working royals.
‘He is challenging the Home Office in court on this issue at the moment, the level of threat is assessed by the Executive Committee for Royalty and Public Figures (Ravec), which falls under the Home Office.
‘He believes there was a threat from extremists and neo-Nazis ad claims his security had been compromised after an incident when he visited Britain in summer 2021. Now it could credibly be claimed there is a new threat.
‘Harry could use this as a lever which could determine if he and Meghan attend the Coronation, always assuming the promised invitation arrives.’
EXCLUSIVE: Former head of royal protection condemns Prince Harry’s boasts about killing Taliban fighters as ‘foolish in the extreme’
By Rebecca English, Royal Editor
A former head of royal protection has condemned Prince Harry’s boasts about killing Taliban fighters as ‘foolish in the extreme’.
Retired chief superintendent Dai Davies said that the Duke of Sussex’s claims had increased the security risk not just to himself and his family – but the British public at large.
‘He has raised the risk to all of us by resurrecting the war in Afghanistan with his ill-advised comments, which are foolish in the extreme,’ he said.
‘In the UK we have a Coronation this year with a whole raft of public events. All it takes is one extremist seeking to make a point.’
Mr Davies, who has worked in police and security for more than 50 years, said that Harry’s comments would almost certainly prompt a review of royal security in the UK.
He added: ‘He has increased the risk not just to himself, his wife and children and also those who protect him in the US, but also to our Royal Family here in the UK.
‘This has raised the game. The Taliban has been quite quiet recently but this is a long term issue, you can’t predict when an attack is going to happen.
‘I would be recommending that RAVEC [the Royal and VIP Executive Committee] immediately undertake a risk assessment – not tomorrow but today – and where necessary take steps to increase protection. I think this should apply not just for senior royals but the more junior ones too who may be deemed easier to get at.’
The retired Met Police chief estimated there are around 10,000 Isis and Al Qaeda supporters still in the UK – who he described as a ‘real and present threat’.
Referencing author Salman Rushdie, who was subject to a Fatwa in 1989 and was stabbed on stage last year, Mr Davies added: ‘The combination of a fixated individual driven by ideology is extremely dangerous.
‘We have seen exactly the same issue with the attack on Salman Rushdie recently. It really is a genuine fear.’
He continued: ‘Harry’s decision is just inexplicable. He has added fuel to the fire. Boasting about how many Taliban he killed and describing them as pieces on a chessboard has raised the game. And coming from an ex senior royal? Well it just beggars belief.
‘The risk to both him and our Royal Family has been significantly heightened due to his foolish comments. I would really like to know whose idea it was to even discuss this. What kind of idiot are you, Harry?’
Referring to Harry’s legal battle over his security arrangements, Mr Davies said: ‘The irony of him doing this against a backdrop of taking the Home Office and the Met to court for pulling his [official police] bodyguards when he quit and moved to the US is lost on no one.
‘I can’t think of a more foolish thing for him to have done.’
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