When young man Axel Rudakubana went on a murderous rampage in the seaside town of Southport last July, he not only destroyed the lives of his victims and their families, but also sent shockwaves through British society.
On Thursday, the 18-year-old received a 52-year prison sentence for killing three little girls and stabbing 10 other people, an atrocity that was followed by a wave of online disinformation and anti-immigration riots across England.
When full details of Rudakubana’s disturbing story emerged this week, they sparked a furious debate about the UK’s approach to open justice, as well as the country’s understanding of modern terrorism.
Rudakubana was arrested at the scene of last July’s slaying at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, still standing over a child’s body with a kitchen knife in hand.
In the days and weeks that followed, police released very few details. Misinformation began to spread online, including inaccurate claims that the attacker was an illegal immigrant.
Violent race riots followed and the authorities were later accused of a cover-up, particularly by those on the right of British politics.
It is a claim that police, prosecutors and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, himself a senior barrister and former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, have repeatedly denied.
“If this trial had collapsed because I or anyone else had discovered crucial details while the police were investigating — while the case was being built, while we were awaiting a verdict — then the savage individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a savage man free,” Starmer said on Tuesday.
Starmer’s position, and that of prosecutors, is based on British contempt of court laws dating from the early 1980s that limit what information can be released before a trial to prevent the jury from swaying.
However, barrister Jonathan Hall KC, who is currently reviewing terror legislation for the government, called the state’s interpretation of contempt law in the Southport case “ultra cautious”.
The police could, he told the Financial Times, have safely released his age, his ethnicity, his Rudakubana nationality, his hometown of Cardiff and the fact that he was of a Rwandan Christian background.
Naming him would have been more complex since he was 17, but Hall said prosecutors could and should have applied for a court order to do so.
“Imagine if (the police) had issued a clear, calm, authoritative, honest, transparent statement on Twitter (now x) early,” he said.
“Some people will naturally believe the worst, or in a conspiracy theory, but most people are just looking for information.”
The state’s silence may have been ironic at trial, Hall said, because the jury may have had misinformation in their minds instead.
The justice system would now do well to “refine” its understanding of what “prejudicial” means in an age of social media, he said, as decades-old contempt of court laws are revisited.
The case has also sparked debate about the country’s understanding and response to acts of terror.
Within days of the Southport murders, police discovered Rudakubana was in possession of an al-Qaeda training manual.
Prosecutors would later argue that this was used to plan the attack. He had also manufactured Ricin Detral Poison in the bedroom, before storing it in a plastic box under his bed.
However, while he was charged with possession of terror-related material, he was not charged with committing an act of terror. Even police working on the investigation said they initially struggled to understand why.
“I’m saying: Isn’t this now terrorism, isn’t this now terrorism, isn’t this now terrorism?” Recalled Senior Investigating Officer Jason Pye, a detective inspector at Merseyside Police, about his conversations with prosecutors as the evidence unfolded.
A terrorism charge would also have made his investigation more straightforward, he said. Under terrorism legislation, Rudakubana could have been detained for seven days.
Without it, police had a maximum of 72 hours to piece together their case and gather medical evidence about the 13 victims.
“It would absolutely mean we had time to do a lot more things,” Pye said of a terror charge.
According to prosecutors, the sheer range of material found on Rudakubana’s 43 devices – coupled with his lack of explanation for his actions in interview – meant he could not be charged under the Terrorism Act 2000.
This defines terrorism as “for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause”. It was later updated to include racial ideology.
Among the more than 164,000 documents seized was violent material about the Nazis, Gaza, Grozny and Iraq, as well as footage of the attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Australia last April.
“He wasn’t fighting for a cause,” prosecutor Deanna Heer said Thursday. “His sole purpose was to kill.”
Starmer said this week that he understood “why people ask what the word ‘terrorism’ means”.
“And so, if the law needs to change to recognize this new and dangerous threat, then we will change it — and quickly,” he added.
However Hall, who is now reviewing the legislation for home secretary Yvette Cooper, said he is “sceptical” about expanding the definition of terror.
Casting the net wider, he said, could bring in individuals such as football hooligans or organized criminals.
Rudakubana’s case has also raised questions about how well Britain’s existing Counter-Extremism agencies are equipped to deal with young people obsessed with violence.
In 2022, aged 15, he told Lancashire Police that he had thought about poisoning people and making poison for that purpose, which he later did. The force said it would not comment further ahead of a public inquiry.
Rudakubana was also referred to the government’s counter-extremism prevention program three times between 2019 and 2021.
He was first referred at age 13, when his school noticed him doing school research online.
He was then flagged for posting on Instagram about former Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi, while in April 2021 he was found to be soliciting the 2017 London Bridge terror attacks at school.
In any case, prevent the case from being closed, noting that there was no coherent ideology behind his actions. He did not become a subject of interest to the opposition police.
Speaking before the sentencing, Vicki Evans, senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism policing, said at the time of his referrals the program had not caught a new generation of extremists.
“At the time the preventive partnership response to the growing obsession with extreme violence was evolving, but it was less developed than it is today,” she said.
“While improvements have been made to help address this challenge,” she added, “it is right to ask questions about what more needs to be done.”
