PA/Merseyside Police”Terrorism has changed” as Britain faces a “new and dangerous threat” from extreme violence, Sir Keir Starmer has said in a statement on the Southport murders.Speaking in Downing Street after the government announced a public inquiry into the case, the prime minister said failings by the state “leap off the page”.Axel Rudakubana had been referred three times to anti-extremism programme Prevent before killing Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar last July.Sir Keir said if the law needed to change, it would – as he denied there had been any cover-up over the background in the case.He said a review would be carried out into “our entire counter-extremist system”, adding that he had asked cross-bench peer Lord Anderson of Ipswich KC – the new independent Prevent commissioner – “to hold this system to account, to shine a light into its darkest corners”.The prime minister said in the past the predominant threat was highly-organised groups such as al-Qaeda, but warned the new threat was acts of extreme violence by “loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom” accessing material online.Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the inquiry into Rudakubana would also “consider the wider challenge of rising youth violence and extremism”.In a House of Commons statement, she said 162 people were referred to Prevent last year for concerns relating to school massacres.Cooper said Rudakubana had been “easily able” to order a knife from Amazon despite having a previous conviction for violence and being aged 17 at the time. She also revealed he had admitted to having carried a knife more than 10 times.In his Downing Street speech, Sir Keir said he had known details of the case following the attack, but contempt of court laws prevented him from disclosing them sooner. He said: “If this trial had collapsed, because I or anyone else had revealed crucial details while the police were investigating, while the case was being built, while we were awaiting a verdict, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man.”Rudakubana had been in possession of an al-Qaeda training manual and had produced the biological toxin ricin. Despite this, his case has never been treated as terror-related by police as he did not appear to follow an ideology, such as Islamism or racial hatred, and instead appeared to be motivated by an interest in extreme violence.As well as being referred to Prevent three times between 2019-2021, Rudakubana was excluded from school aged 13 in October 2019, after which he returned to the school in December that year with a hockey stick and assaulted a pupil, breaking their wrist.Lancashire Child Safeguarding Partnership said Lancashire Constabulary responded to five calls from his home address, between October 2019 and May 2022, relating to concerns about his behaviour.Rudakubana also called Childline several times as a young teenager, eventually telling the service he was going to take a kni …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnPA/Merseyside Police”Terrorism has changed” as Britain faces a “new and dangerous threat” from extreme violence, Sir Keir Starmer has said in a statement on the Southport murders.Speaking in Downing Street after the government announced a public inquiry into the case, the prime minister said failings by the state “leap off the page”.Axel Rudakubana had been referred three times to anti-extremism programme Prevent before killing Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar last July.Sir Keir said if the law needed to change, it would – as he denied there had been any cover-up over the background in the case.He said a review would be carried out into “our entire counter-extremist system”, adding that he had asked cross-bench peer Lord Anderson of Ipswich KC – the new independent Prevent commissioner – “to hold this system to account, to shine a light into its darkest corners”.The prime minister said in the past the predominant threat was highly-organised groups such as al-Qaeda, but warned the new threat was acts of extreme violence by “loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom” accessing material online.Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the inquiry into Rudakubana would also “consider the wider challenge of rising youth violence and extremism”.In a House of Commons statement, she said 162 people were referred to Prevent last year for concerns relating to school massacres.Cooper said Rudakubana had been “easily able” to order a knife from Amazon despite having a previous conviction for violence and being aged 17 at the time. She also revealed he had admitted to having carried a knife more than 10 times.In his Downing Street speech, Sir Keir said he had known details of the case following the attack, but contempt of court laws prevented him from disclosing them sooner. He said: “If this trial had collapsed, because I or anyone else had revealed crucial details while the police were investigating, while the case was being built, while we were awaiting a verdict, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man.”Rudakubana had been in possession of an al-Qaeda training manual and had produced the biological toxin ricin. Despite this, his case has never been treated as terror-related by police as he did not appear to follow an ideology, such as Islamism or racial hatred, and instead appeared to be motivated by an interest in extreme violence.As well as being referred to Prevent three times between 2019-2021, Rudakubana was excluded from school aged 13 in October 2019, after which he returned to the school in December that year with a hockey stick and assaulted a pupil, breaking their wrist.Lancashire Child Safeguarding Partnership said Lancashire Constabulary responded to five calls from his home address, between October 2019 and May 2022, relating to concerns about his behaviour.Rudakubana also called Childline several times as a young teenager, eventually telling the service he was going to take a kni …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
