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Home Secretary announces inquiry after ‘agencies failed’ to identify threat of Southport killer

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced a public inquiry into the Southport murders
Image: 10 Downing Street
Image: 10 Downing Street

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Yvette Cooper, UK Home Secretary, has announced a public inquiry into how Southport killer Axel Rudakubana “came to be so dangerous”.

Rudakubana pleaded guilty to the murder of three young girls, as well as 13 other charges on Monday, relating to his knife attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July of last year.

After the unexpected guilty plea entered for Rudakubana, he will be sentenced on Thursday at 11am. Judge Justice Goose said that it is “inevitable” Rudakubana will be given a “life sentence equivalent”.

CPS prosecutor Ursula Doyle said Rudakubana had “meticulously planned” the attack and had a “sickening interest in death and violence”. This interest can be seen through previous instances of violence, including being expelled from school at 13 after breaking a peer’s wrist with a hockey stick. 

Other charges include possession of a knife in a public place, possessing a terrorist organisation training manual, a PDF containing “The Al-Quada Training Manual”, and production of the biological toxin ricin.

The addition of terror charges came two months after his initial arrest, prompting accusations from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage of a “cover-up”. The widespread riots across the UK last summer occured after online misinformation incorrectly labelled Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, as an asylum seeker.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said there are “grave” questions to be answered about how the state “failed in its ultimate duty” to protect its citizens, saying that he will “leave no stone unturned”. 

He also discussed how “terrorism has changed”, and that the ability for attackers like Rudakubana to access extremist content “with just a few clicks” online represents a “new threat” to Britain. 

Cooper spoke on how various agencies that Rudakubana had been referred to “failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed”. She said that the killer had been referred to the Prevent anti-extremism scheme three times between December 2019 and April 2021, and had been in “contact with a range of different state agencies throughout his teenage years”, including the police, social services, and mental health services.

She goes on to say that “growing numbers of teenagers have been referred to Prevent, investigated by counter-terror police, or referred to other agencies amid concerns around serious violence and extremism

“We need to face up to why this has been happening and what needs to change”. 

Keir Starmer mirrored this in a statement saying that the failure for services and the Prevent scheme to identify Radakubana’s risk was “clearly wrong” and “failed those families” of the children killed.

He goes on to say that the killings of Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, must be a “line in the sand” with regards to how Britain protects its citizens and children.

He emphasises that responsibility lies with the “vile individual who carried it out”, condemning the “barbaric” murders, but that he “won’t let any institution of the state deflect from their failure”.

He went on to say that “We must, of course, ask and answer difficult questions, questions that should be far-reaching, unburdened by cultural or institutional sensitivities and driven only by the pursuit of justice.

“That is what we owe the families”.

The Prime Minister assured that “nothing will be off the table” in the inquiry, but did not address when the it will begin. 

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