The leaked report comes ahead of a public inquiry to question counterterrorism police and look at any ‘missed opportunities’ to spot Axel Rudakubana’s obsession with extreme violence
A damning Home Office report has reportedly revealed counterterrorism police did not believe Southport killer Axel Rudakubana was “in danger of being radicalised”.
Officers will be criticised as part of the Prevent learning review for failing to properly take into account the 18-year-old’s obsession with extreme violence when it is released, the Sunday Times reports.
Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 52 years on Thursday – one of the highest minimum terms on record – for fatally stabbing 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.
He also pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of eight other children, as well as class instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes. News of the leaked report comes as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper already announced a public inquiry will be held to look at any “missed opportunities” to identify Rudakubana’s murderous intent and ordered a “thorough review” of the Prevent referrals.
Writing in the Sunday Times, she said the review will look at individuals “obsessed with school massacres” and also “Islamist extremism”, she said. “Where individuals are suspected to be neurodiverse, interventions should not stop because they are awaiting assessments, ignoring any risks they might pose,” she added.
Rudakubana was diagnosed by local health authorities with an autism spectrum disorder.
The Home Secretary also said there was a “serious problem” when cases did not pass the Prevent threshold but other agencies, such as social services and mental health, failed to step in.
Three separate referrals were made to the Government’s anti-terror programme, Prevent, about Rudakubana’s behaviour in the years before the attack, as well as six separate calls to police. He had previously attacked a pupil with a hockey stick, used school computers to look up the London Bridge terror outrage and carried a knife on a bus and into class before he carried out the Southport murders.
Knives, archery arrows and ricin, a biological toxin 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide, were found when police raided Rudakubana’s home after the attack, with evidence suggesting the equipment needed for the substance was bought in 2022.
