Stéphane Place and Lionel Gougelot (special correspondents in London), edited by Ophélie Artaud 07:26, September 19, 2022
This Monday, the whole world will be able to bid a final farewell to the Queen of England, who died ten days ago.
Historic funerals, with a precise program, which will be broadcast live around the world.
On site, 500 distinguished guests will be able to attend the ceremony in Westminster Abbey.
A security challenge for London law enforcement.
Her reign ends where it began in 1953. Westminster Abbey, the place chosen for the Queen's funeral which will begin at noon, French time, the end of a grandiose protocol.
In the Westminster district, there are still many Britons who only have a few tens of minutes left to hope to see the queen's coffin.
The last people who will be able to bow before the queen's coffin are still in line.
They joined the queue yesterday afternoon and will enter Westminster Hall in a few minutes, the doors of which will close at around 7.30am.
This public will no longer be able to access it after these four days of exhibition of the queen's coffin.
2,000 guests, 2 million people in London, 4 billion viewers
Then, it is a precise protocol that is put in place.
At 9 a.m., the 2,000 guests who will attend the ceremony will be welcomed at Westminster Abbey.
Among them, foreign leaders, but also 200 everyday heroes: among them there will be many members of the National Health Service, that is to say the health services, obviously on the front line against Covid.
And then military heroes rewarded with the Victoria Cross and elected officials too.
And probably, but we don't know the names, some celebrities.
At precisely 11.35am, soldiers from the Queen's 1st Grenadier Battalion will lift the coffin from her purple-draped catafalque and carry it to the cannon barrel positioned outside Westminster Hall.
Cannon carriage which, according to tradition,
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An event broadcast over the entire planet: 4 billion viewers, half of the world's population, which would make Elizabeth II's funeral the most watched event in history according to British media projections.
And the British authorities expect up to 2 million visitors in the streets of London, who will be able to follow the ceremony on a giant screen.
Not to mention the 500 distinguished guests: heads of state, crowned heads, the crème de la crème who are to join Westminster Abbey in the morning.
The scope of this operation is unheard of for the police.
10,000 police, snipers and 1,500 soldiers
Moreover, to properly measure the extent of the security challenge of his funeral and the mobilization of the police, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, explained that it was a bit like organizing the Games on the same day. Olympics, a royal wedding, the Notting Hill Carnival and the London Marathon.
For this, it is a device developed for years by the authorities which will be put in place from the first hours of the day.
10,000 police officers on a war footing with kilometers of roads blocked in the Westminster and Buckingham Palace area, under close video surveillance of course.
Snipers will be positioned on the roofs and 1,500 army soldiers have come as reinforcements.
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Police grid on the route of the procession which will see after the ceremony the royal coffin walk to Hyde Park before its departure for Windsor.
Added to this is the maximum alerting of the intelligence and counter-terrorism services.
What gives the authorities cold sweats is the safety of the hundred heads of state, government and crowned heads who will be gathered in Westminster Abbey.
They will therefore all be transported by bus, with the exception of Joe Biden and the Emperor of Japan, who will travel in an armored limousine.
In this context, the London police appeal to the vigilance of the public who will attend these funerals by asking them to report any suspicious behavior or object around the ceremony.