Sword-wielding man arrested outside Buckingham Palace


A man brandishing a sword and yelling "Allahu Akbar" was arrested Friday night outside Buckingham Palace, the residence of Queen Elizabeth II in London. Three officers suffered minor injuries during the arrest, and the incident is being investigated as a possible terrorist attempt. The suspect is 26 and hails from Luton, north of London.
A "car deliberately drove at a police van and stopped in front of it in a restricted area," said a statement from London police. As the officers from the van "challenged the driver, who was the only occupant in the car, he reached for what we now know to be a four-foot sword" before being incapacitated with tear gas.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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