Punishment more important than extremism definition – Southport families’ lawyer
Punishment more important than extremism definition – Southport families’ lawyer
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The right punishment is more important than the definition of extremism, a lawyer for the families of the three girls killed in the Southport stabbings has said, with the Home Secretary set to reject advice to widen the scope of the word. Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Bebe King, six, were murdered at a Taylor Swift dance event at a centre in the Merseyside town last summer by Axel Rudakubana, who was jailed for life with a minimum of 52 years.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the 18-year-old represented a new kind of threat, distinct from politically or ideologically motivated terrorism, with “acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety”.
He said that, if needed, the Government would change the law to recognise the “new and dangerous threat” and “review our entire counter-extremist system to make sure we have what we need to defeat it”. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is expected to reject Government advice to widen the definition of extremism to cover environmentalists, the far left, and men prejudiced against women.
Asked for her reaction, Sara Stanger, a solicitor for the Southport stabbing victims’ families, told BBC Breakfast: “I think as long as the punishment fits, it doesn’t really matter what the terminology is.”. She said online safety will be a “key part” of the public inquiry into the stabbings.
