Islam

Axel Rudakubana was referred to an anti-extremism programme three times but his obsession with mass shootings was dismissed as an ‘interest in world news’

Counterterrorism officers believed Axel Rudakubana had an interest in world news and current affairs but no cause or political belief and was “not in danger of being radicalised”, a Home Office review has found.

A redacted version of the report into decisions made by the northwest of England’s Prevent team in the Southport killer’s case is due to be released. It exposes serious failings in the officers’ approach to the violent extremist.

On Thursday Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years for the murders of three girls in a knife attack described in court as “shocking” and “pure evil”. The Sunday Times understands that Rudakubana was given a three-year discount to his sentence for pleading guilty. The families and politicians have expressed anger that he fell short of a full-life tariff due to him being 17 at the time of the murders.

An important rule for building walls is to know when you are walling someone out and when you are walling yourself in. Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s conservative CDU and likely next chancellor, is about to find this out the hard way. After two people — including a two-year-old child — were killed in a stabbing incident in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg and three more seriously injured, the German public is understandably angry.

President Trump’s long-promised ICE raids continued on Thursday — as the total number of illegal migrants nabbed by federal authorities reached 538, including new arrests of pedophiles, gang members, and a suspected terrorist in New York.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are scouring cities and states, trying to round up illegal aliens who are either wanted for crimes in their home country or who have committed crimes during their time in the US.

A source told The Post that many of the migrants rounded up by agents were convicted in “some very heinous cases.”

A man has been jailed for 30 years for attempting to murder two people with a meat cleaver outside the former Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2020.

Zaheer Mahmood, 29, from Pakistan, attacked and badly wounded two employees of the Premieres Lignes news agency, days after Charlie Hebdo had republished cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

He was unaware Charlie Hebdo had moved offices to a secret location after 12 people were killed there in a gun attack claimed by al-Qaeda following the original publication of the cartoons in 2015.

Is it really Jeff Bezos’s fault that Axel Rudakubana did what he did? The teenager was stopped on multiple occasions with a knife, including one he bought on Amazon, prompting a fresh round of silly headlines about new controls on knife sales. These have been widely denounced as deflection, and there is indeed something about the Rudakubana story that feels off. In particular, Keir Starmer’s insistence on the suspect’s lone-wolf status and pivot to “knife control” is driving a proliferation of conspiratorial thinking. But is there really a sinister cover-up?

The Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been jailed for a minimum of 52 years for the “ferocious” and “sadistic” murders of three young girls and attempted murder of 10 others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

The 18-year-old refused to appear in the dock when a judge said the teenager would likely “never be released and he will be in custody for all his life” for the “harrowing and atrocious premeditated attack” last summer.

The full horror of his actions was laid bare at Liverpool crown court on Thursday when it emerged that Rudakubana had boasted of his attack shortly after being arrested on 29 July last year.

“You’ll never be wasting our time,” reads the poster (above and below) featuring Matt Jukes (right), Head of the Counter Terrorism Police, the organisation responsible for the counter-extremism programme Prevent, standing next to a Manchester Arena survivor. Jukes has a stern look in his eyes, as if to warn would-be extremists that they can’t hide or evade justice from Britain’s toughest force.

Back in the real world, however, there are signs that all is not well with Prevent (to put it incredibly mildly). On Monday it was revealed that Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, had been referred to the programme three times between 2019 and 2021 due to his obsession with violence, but Prevent never heeded the warnings.

A stabbing in the southern German city of Aschaffenburg has left two people dead on Wednesday, local police said.

A 41-year-old man and a two-year-old boy died in the attack. Two others were seriously injured.

A 28-year-old suspect who police say is from Afghanistan has been taken into custody after the killing. Another person who witnessed the attack is also being held for questioning, but is not suspected of wrongdoing.

‼️ #BREAKING #NEW:

Today (January 22) in #Aschaffenburg, northwestern Bavaria, a two-year-old toddler and a 41-year-old man were brutally murdered in a stabbing attack at a city park by a 28-year-old Afghan man. Two others were injured in the attack.

#Germany… pic.twitter.com/KUXJ29kdG2

— LeanneSpurs (@LeanneSpurs) January 22, 2025

Axel Rudakubana pled guilty to the murders of three young girls—in the Southport knife attack—on Monday, January 20th, but his conviction poses awkward questions for the Labour government.

Rudakubana also offered an 11th-hour guilty plea for his 10 attempted murders, producing the biological toxin ricin, and possession of a PDF entitled Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual.

Keir Starmer has pledged to act in light of the revelations about Southport killer Axel Rudakubana. The 17-year-old murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year, and it has since emerged that Rudakubana – who pleaded guilty to owning an online version of an al-Qaeda training manual – had been flagged for his radicalism on three occasions between 2019 and 2021. As the Prime Minister explained: ‘On each of these occasions, a judgment was made that he did not meet the threshold for intervention, a judgment that was clearly wrong and which failed those families.’

Axel Rudakubana was referred to the Government’s Prevent scheme three times before his attack in Southport.

The killer was first referred to the anti-extremism programme as a 13-year-old schoolboy in 2019, when teachers became concerned by his obsession with school massacres.

It is believed that he was referred to Prevent again twice in 2021 following his expulsion from the Range High School after staff were worried about his interest in the 2017 terror attacks, which included incidents in central London and the Manchester Arena bombing.