“In other countries, they throw pies or rotten tomatoes. I thought a flower showed more consideration.”


The Flower Girl Strikes Again
From City Paper’s daily news, Feb. 2004

A teenager who gained notoriety for slapping Britain's Prince Charles in 2002 is in deep water once again: she was jailed in January, 2004, on suspicion that she set fire to the door of the Ministry of Education earlier in the month. She was apparently protesting new laws requiring that all schools, including those with all-Russian student bodies, teach mostly in Latvian. Alina Lebedeva, an 18-year-old ethnic Russian, appeared in court on January 28 for starting the ministry blaze, which resulted in little damage and no injuries. She was jailed until a police investigation was completed.
 

                                                                                     From the CITY PAPER archives, 2002.
RIGA (CITY PAPER) Fairytales weren’t supposed to read quite like this: Pretty young girl meets prince, slaps him, is subsequently jailed and indicted for “endangering the life of a foreign dignitary.” But that unlikely narrative happened for real in Latvia when a slender, red-headed teenager assaulted the heir to the British throne with a long-stemmed carnation during his five-day Baltic tour in November, 2002. The bizarre incident, for better or worse, shot Latvia into the international limelight for several days and made 16-year-old Alina Lebedeva an instant—if dubious—celebrity.
       Lebedeva carried out what police say was her premeditated horticultural attack as Prince Charles stopped to talk to a group of school children waving Union Jacks on a street corner in Riga; she leaned over them from behind and, without warning, swiped him briskly and cleanly across his cheek with the red flower (see above photo). Charles, ducking and weaving slightly, looked momentarily startled but was otherwise unhurt. After casting a bewildered look at his security guards, he kept moving along the street talking to bystanders, among several hundred people who had turned out to greet him. The Times, as other British newspapers, noted that the prince ordered a scotch and ice (rather than his usual water) at a reception an hour later—suggesting, they said, that Charles may have been shaken by the incident.
       As armed security guards seized the girl and led her to a nearby police van, Lebedeva said she’d done the deed to protest Britain’s role in the Afghan war. “Britain,” she added in Russian, as British journalists jockeyed for position and shouted questions at her, “is the enemy of the world.” She also said she backed the National Bolsheviks, a tiny, pro-communist fringe group based in Latvia and Russia. It advocates the restoration of the Soviet Union and bitterly opposes Baltic entry into the NATO alliance. Several of its members were convicted for terrorism earlier this year for briefly taking over a Riga church and threatening to blow it up; it turned out later that the explosive they said they were carrying was a fake grenade.
       Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga later issued an apology to Charles, saying “there are mentally unstable and ill people who wish to stick out at such occasions in all countries.”
       Just before, Charles had laid a wreath at the Freedom Monument, a towering stone obelisk in Riga that has come to symbolize Latvian independence. The prince arrived in Latvia from Lithuania during a tour to mark Britain’s recognition of Baltic independence a decade ago. He started the week in Estonia.
       The assault with the flower, if nothing else, proved to be a boon to stand-up comedians and headline writers in Britain, where the affair was prominently covered: Royal Bouquet Turns into Brickbat a headline splashed across the cover of one British tabloid read; Charles’s ‘Flower Girl’ Jailed read another. Even the prince joined in the mirth, saying he was pleased so many people had a good laugh at his expense. “I’m very glad it’s given pleasure to everybody. It’s what I’m here for,” he said at his 53rd birthday party back in Britain a week later.

Latvian police, however, were not amused.
       They jailed Lebdeva for three days and, to the astonishment of many observers, initially charged her with a serious felony, that she had threatened the life of a visiting official; she could have faced a 15-year prison sentence. Police official Didzis Smitins told the Baltic News Service that hers was no harmless prank and that he expected the schoolgirl to “do some time.” He did not specify just how a brush across the face with a flower had posed a threat to His Highness’ life—saying only that if such an assault went unpunished, it might only encourage copycat attacks on other VIPs in the future.
       The decision to charge her raised eyebrows and prompted some criticism in Latvia and also in Great Britain, where the indictment even led one BBC radio station to hold a talk show about the Baltic state’s criminal justice system. Others wondered whether the attention her action elicited from police wouldn’t encourage, rather than discourage, similar protests. Others said her prosecution only gave undue publicity to Lebedeva’s extreme left views.
       Royal spokesman appealed for leniency, with some British newspapers alleging that Charles himself was shocked by Lebedeva’s imprisonment and prosecution. The prince’s office in London, at St James’s Palace, dismissed the whole affair, saying: “It was a minor incident that was over in seconds and the prince continued unaffected;” it added that “we hope and trust the Latvian authorities will take that into account when looking into this case.”
       In the end, prosecutors at least partly heeded those appeals, reducing the charges against Lebedeva to “hooliganism,” which carries a maximum two-year jail term. 
       A security officer said the 11th grader was well known as a political activist in her hometown of Daugavpils, in eastern Latvia, where she attends a Russian school. “When the police told her parents what had happened, her mother was not surprised,” an official was quoted as telling The Times. “It was as if the mother expected the call. The girl had planned it very carefully. She was absolutely determined. If she had not succeeded in Riga, she planned to try again when the prince visited Daugavpils later in the week.”
       The teenager at first appeared to apologize.
       “I didn’t want to offend you personally and I ask for your forgiveness and hope you understand,” Lebedeva wrote in a letter published in the Russian-language Chas daily. 
       But several days later she was quoted as saying she didn’t regret what she’d done and that she hoped that drawing the carnation on the future British king had furthered her anti-war cause. 
       She told Chas that she thought the flower attack was comparatively innocuous and that she didn’t quite understand all the fuss. 
      “In other countries, they throw pies or rotten tomatoes. I thought a flower showed more consideration,” she said.
       Prince Charles later responded to a letter of apology from Lebedeva’s parents, saying he understood rebellious streaks in teenagers and wished their daughter well. 
       “I am well aware that all of us are prone at some stages in our lives to feel so passionately about a cause that it leads us to do things that we may, on reflection, rather regret,” he was quoted as writing. “I do hope now that at this terribly important period in her life, Alina concentrates her energies on passing her school exams and gives herself the opportunity to develop a worthwhile and fulfilling career.”
       Despite Latvian concerns that the affair might have cast a less-than-favorable light on their country, there were almost certainly fringe benefits to it.
       If it’s true, for example, that all publicity is good publicity, then the flower scandal should have been welcomed by those struggling to raise Latvia’s name recognition abroad. The word Latvia probably hasn’t featured so prominently in the British media for decades. 

                                                    —CITY PAPER-The Baltic States
Above photo: AFI.