Axel Rudakubana: Anti-terror Prevent scheme missed chances to stop Southport killer, Government review finds
Axel Rudakubana: Anti-terror Prevent scheme missed chances to stop Southport killer, Government review finds
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There was "sufficient risk" posed by Southport killer Axel Rudakubana to keep his cases within the Government's counter-terrorism Prevent programme active and these were "closed prematurely", Home Office minister Dan Jarvis has said. Rudakubana was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 52 years – one of the highest minimum terms on record – for murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on July 29 last year.
The security minister told the House of Commons that Rudakubana was interested in the Manchester Arena bombing in 2016 that killed 22 people, and had talked to others about stabbing people. The convicted child killer was referred to Prevent three times between December 2019 when he was aged 13 and April 2021 when he was 14. Those referrals were made by his schools. The first referral reported concerns about him carrying a knife and searching for school shootings on the internet, while the second referral was focused on his online activity relating to Libya and Gaddafi.
His third referral was for searching for London bombings, the IRA and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Mr Jarvis went on: “On each of these occasions, the decision at the time was that the perpetrator should not progress to the channel multi-agency process. But the Prevent learning review found that there was sufficient risk for the perpetrator to have been managed through Prevent. "It found that the referral was closed prematurely, and there was sufficient concern to keep the case active while further information was collected.".
