The teenager accused of murdering three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance club in Southport is facing new charges of possessing a terrorism handbook and producing the deadly poison ricin.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, was originally charged with the murders of Bebe King, six, Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, as well as the attempted murder of 10 other people after the stabbings on 29 July.
Riots spread across England amid speculation that the incident was a terrorist attack, a claim fuelled by disinformation online about the identity of the suspect.
Having initially said the stabbings were “not currently being treated as terror-related”, Merseyside police on Tuesday charged Rudakubana with possessing a study of al-Qaida’s training manual and producing a biological weapon, ricin. The Southport attack has not been declared a terrorist incident, however.
The fresh charges have prompted the question of whether there has been a cover-up by police and the government. So what is the truth?
Why hasn’t the Southport attack been declared a terrorist incident?
For an attack to be declared as terrorism under UK law, it must have been carried out “for the purpose of political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. In this case, police and prosecutors have been unable to establish the motivation behind the stabbings.
Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is clear that for an incident to be declared as terror-related it must be “designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation” or to intimidate the public or a section of the public.
Even if a suspect has been charged with a separate offence under the Terrorism Act – in this case section 58, relating to possession of material – there would need to be evidence of a sufficient motive in order to class an ensuing attack as “terrorism”. In this case, that threshold has not yet been met.
As Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism laws, told the BBC on Wednesday, the line between violence and terrorism is often “wafer-thin”. “It doesn’t follow, I’m afraid, that because someone has carried out a big attack that they therefore must be advancing a cause,” he said.
Another important element is that Rudakubana has not been charged with possessing a terror training manual. Rather, the pdf allegedly found on his computer was more akin to an academic study, titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual”.
Has there been a police or government cover-up?
Questions over a cover-up stem from speculation that the incident was terror-related – a narrative pushed by high-profile rightwing figures in the days after 29 July. It was revived on Tuesday by the two Conservative party leadership contenders, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, one of whom will be announced as leader on Saturday.
Jenrick said he was “seriously concerned that facts may have been withheld” while Badenoch said there were “serious questions” to be asked of the police, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the government. But do the concerns stack up?
No. Firstly, the details of ongoing criminal investigations are necessarily withheld from the public so as not to prejudice any future trial. One of the key questions for police and prosecutors when they consider releasing information about a suspect is: what impact could this have on future jurors who will be asked to decide whether that person is guilty or not?
Indeed, more information was released about this suspect than would ordinarily be the case. Barely 24 hours after the attack, Merseyside police took the unusual step of confirming that the teenager was born in the UK, in an attempt to quell disinformation claiming that he was an asylum seeker who had arrived on a small boat.
Days later a judge allowed his identity to be released, even though the then 17-year-old was protected by anonymity because he was under-18, as a false, Arab-sounding name was spread by those suggesting it was a terror attack.
Secondly, it is a matter of timing. The ricin and terror material was allegedly discovered after Rudakubana was charged with murder, so it could not have been disclosed at the same time.
Why have the extra charges been brought now, three months after the attack? The most plausible explanation is that investigations take time, particularly those as complex as this. Detectives will have wanted to build as full a picture as possible, and then interview the suspect about those allegations, before prosecutors decided what charges to bring.
Whitehall sources have confirmed that government officials knew about these two new potential charges weeks ago. That is not particularly unusual, firstly because it is a high-profile case but also because the new charges need to be authorised by senior figures in the government.
To charge someone under the Biological Weapons Act, the CPS has to obtain consent from the government’s law officers – the attorney general or solicitor general. The BBC reported that consent was requested in this case in recent weeks and granted “within days”.
Similarly, it is understood that only two law enforcement officials have the authority to declare a terrorism attack – so this decision was scrutinised at very senior levels.
Was Nigel Farage ‘right all along’ as he suggests?
A day after the Southport stabbings, amid a swirl of online disinformation, the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, questioned whether “the truth is being withheld from us”, in a video posted to his 2 million followers on X, formerly Twitter.
“Was this guy being monitored by the security services? Some say he was, others less sure,” he said at the time. “The police say it’s a non-terror incident, just as they said the stabbing of an army lieutenant colonel in uniform on the streets of Kent the other day was a non-terror incident.
“I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer to that but I think it’s a fair and legitimate question. What I do know is something is going horribly wrong in our once beautiful country.”
Within an hour of the new charges being announced on Tuesday, Farage posted again: “The Southport attacker has now been charged with terrorism offences. Perhaps I was right all along.”
But the stabbings are still being treated as a non-terror incident, for the reasons explained above. And it remains untrue that the suspect is a migrant or arrived by small boat.
The claim that the truth was being withheld from the public is more complex, also for the reasons set out above – namely that the details of ongoing criminal investigations are necessarily kept out of the public domain due to the risk of prejudicing any future trial.
Are contempt of court laws in need of reform?
The 1981 Contempt of Court Act criminalises publications that create a substantial risk that the course of justice will be seriously prejudiced. It aims to guarantee a fair trial by ensuring that when jurors hear a case they decide it solely on what they hear in the courtroom and not based on external reports or speculation. It involves a delicate balance between the right to a fair trial and the right to freedom of expression.
While it is perhaps most commonly associated with newspapers and TV, the law extends to any publication, including by members of the public and politicians. When the then home secretary, Suella Braverman, defended the police after a firearms officer was charged with the murder of Chris Kaba (he was later acquitted), an emergency legal hearing was held to address concerns about prejudicing the coming trial, although no charges were brought for contempt and the trial went ahead.
Contempt of court laws kick in when proceedings are active, which means after a suspect has been arrested. This explains why after major incidents there can sometimes be an initial barrage of information about the suspect before it goes quiet. This is sometimes wrongly construed as a conspiracy of silence by people commenting on social media.
There are concerns that the law on contempt is too restrictive, and the Law Commission is consulting on whether it should be changed. Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism laws, said he had written to the commission to say “it’s important for trust and public confidence that more information is made available”. He said the alternative was that “if there is an information gap, particularly in the mainstream media, then there are other voices, particularly in social media, who will try and fill it”.
Change in the law notwithstanding, he said the government and police should provide the information that they could, and not “fall into the trap of saying we can only say zilch because there’s criminal proceedings. Quite often there’s quite a fair amount of information that can be put into the public domain [without seriously prejudicing proceedings].”
Could the charges and subsequent claims trigger unrest?
Concerns about further unrest are very real. The Guardian understands that about 2,000 public order officers – riot police – have been placed on standby this week to respond to any signs of trouble.
It is barely three months since the worst civil disorder in England since 2011, and police chiefs are aware of how quickly and unpredictably violence can spread. The atmosphere in Southport and nearby Liverpool, in particular, remains febrile.
The huge number of people iwho have been arrested and charged over the unrest – 1,590 arrested and 1,015 charged, as of this week – may act as some deterrent but police will be braced for further disorder, particularly given the increased antisocial behaviour often seen at this time of year, around Halloween and Bonfire Night.
There is also concern about claims of “two-tier policing” propagated by some commentators who suggest – without evidence – that rightwing protesters and rioters are treated more harshly.
