With the country still reeling from the details that emerged in the sentencing of Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, troubling questions continue to emerge over the many opportunities missed to stop him.
The 18-year-old travelled to a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop at The Hart Space on 29 July last year, before unleashing 15 minutes of horror with a kitchen knife upon defenceless children.
Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, all lost their lives, while 10 others were seriously injured.
The killer, who had a twisted obsession with violence, has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 52 years.
It has emerged there were multiple warning signs that the teenager was plotting an act of evil, with his concerned teachers making referrals to the government’s flagship anti-terror programme Prevent in the years before the attack.
He was referred three times between 2019 and 2021 specifically over concerns about his interest in violence.
They included:
Despite the three referrals over Rudakubana, concerns about him were never escalated up the chain, meaning he was not put under enhanced monitoring.
Following his arrest in July, an urgent Prevent review was carried out over the summer which found that while there was evidence he had an obsession with violence, his case was not escalated as he did not appear to fit the mould of a potential extremist.
This is not the first time Prevent has been unable to catch a killer before they embarked on a murderous rampage, prompting a fresh wave of criticism for the government scheme.
Ali Harbi Ali murdered Southend MP Sir David Amess at a constituency surgery in 2021 and is currently serving a whole-life term in prison.
As a teenager, Ali had been referred to Prevent and engaged with the counter-radicalisation programme between 2014 and 2015 but was left unchecked after just one meeting.
He later boasted to the Old Bailey: “I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.”
Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain ahead of Rudakubana’s sentencing, his daughter Katie Amess said Prevent was not “foiling any terrorist attacks, it is allowing people to commit these crimes”.
She added: “I have been pushing and pushing and pushing for an inquiry from the Conservative government and from, now, the Labour Government.
“I tried to take the Government to court, I tried to take the police to court, and every door that I knock on is slammed in my face. Nobody wants to take accountability, nobody wants to delve into what happened and try and figure out how we can stop it.”
Other killers who had been referred to Prevent but went on to carry out heinous acts also include Plymouth gunman Jake Davison, who murdered five people including a three-year-old girl.
The apprentice crane operator first killed his mother Maxine, who had previously referred him to the scehem in November 2016 after becoming concerned about his behaviour. Despite information that he had a fixation with firearms being passed on to a government representative, the official did not feel it met the criteria for a formal referral.
In August 2021, the 22-year-old shot his mother at their family home before walking the streets and killing four others with his shotgun before taking his own life.
Another killer who appeared to slip through the net was Khairi Saadallah, who went on to stab three men in Reading’s Forbury Gardens on 20 June 2020.
Concerns had been raised to community mental health teams, probation officers and Prevent that Saadallah could carry out a London Bridge-style attack due to his extremist views.
He was the subject of dozens of intelligence reports which showed a pattern of violence and references to extremism, and had a string of previous convictions which led to repeated periods in prison from 2015 onwards.
Despite being referred to Prevent four times, he was never taken on a case. He was also “triaged” four times by MI5 between 2017 and 2019 over intelligence he wanted to return to Libya to join ISIS but they assessed he was at “low or no risk” of committing terror offences.
Following Rudakubana’s guilty pleas on Monday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced a review of the Prevent programme to be led by the former terror watchdog, Lord David Anderson KC.
Speaking in the Commons, Ms Cooper said Lord Anderson will start work “immediately”, adding: “His first task will be to conduct a thorough review of the Prevent history in this case to identify what changes are needed to make sure serious cases are not missed, particularly when there is mixed and unclear ideology.”
Meanwhile, the Home Office will look at the thresholds used for Prevent referrals to see how violent behaviour can be “urgently” addressed.
It comes after officials in the department spent the summer investigating Rudakubana’s Prevent referrals and found, “given his age and complex needs”, they should not have been closed.
