The former head of the Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Phillips has raised concerns that Southport killer Axel Rudakubana slipped through the cracks because authorities were afraid of being accused of racism.
Rudakubana’s horror attack at a Taylor Swift themed dance class in Southport on July 29 saw him murder three young girls and attempt to murder another ten people.
Since he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 52 years behind bars, questions have been asked of authorities after it was revealed he was referred to counter-terror programme Prevent three times in the years before the attack.
But each time he was dropped from the scheme, despite having an obsession with violence and death which saw him spend time researching school shootings and terror attacks.
Now Mr Phillips, a former politician, has told how he raised concerns as early as 2018 about government legislation that would harm the effectiveness of Prevent.
Writing in the Sun, he criticised the introduction of a new category in the scheme for those who have ‘vulnerability but no ideology or counter-terrorism risk.’
The former Racial Equality Commission head called for a ‘thorough investigation’ to ‘ask whether those who missed the signals did so because they did not want to ask difficult questions about the killer’s racial background’.
It comes after retired police officer Norman Brennan said many are ‘too frightened to intervene’ due to the ‘ethnicity’ of people they are concerned about.
Axel Rudakubana’s horror attack at a Taylor Swift themed dance class in Southport on July 29 saw him murder three young girls and attempt to murder another ten people
The former head of the Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Phillips (pictured) has raised concerns that Southport killer Axel Rudakubana slipped through the cracks because authorities were afraid of being accused of racism
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Today Mr Phillips claims that the introduction of the category was behind the steep drop in referrals to Prevent over concerns about Islamist ideology.
Figures show that while almost 3,200 people were referred to Prevent for concerns related to Islamic extremism in 2018, that number had plummeted to 1,400 by 2019 – the same year as the introduction of the no ideology category.
Last year the number was just 913, compared to 2,489 who had ‘no ideology or counter-terrorism risk’.
No such drop was seen in other categories, including right-wing extremism.
Mr Phillips claims: ‘In short, two thirds of the cases that might previously have been categorised as ‘Islamist’ were, in effect, reassigned to a ‘no ideology, no risk’ category.
‘Why? There is, in my view, only one likely explanation.’
He blamed calls for the expansion of the definition of Islamophobia brought by a group of MPs led by now-Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
‘Many, including myself, in a report for the Policy Exchange think tank, warned that its loose terms (‘a type of racism . . . that targets expressions of Muslimness’) would lead to the chilling of speech, particularly in public services,’ Mr Phillips wrote.
He added that police leaders told Parliament they feared the definition would hamper both Prevent and counterterrorism.
Rudakubana was caught on camera walking towards the Hart Space building where the dance class was being held
Axel Rudakubana skulks in the back of a taxi on his way to murder three young girls
Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, was among the three little girls killed in the attack in Southport
Bebe King, six, was also killed in the knife attack at The Hart Space in Southport last July
Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, was the third girl killed in the horror knife attack in Southport
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Mr Phillips said: ‘It is not hard to imagine many officials opting for the easy life and ticking the ‘no ideology’ box.
‘In cases such as Rudakubana’s, ‘no ideology’ evidently came to mean ‘no action’.’
Agreeing with Mr Phillips is retired police officer Norman Brennan, who told GB News last week that people are ‘too frightened to intervene’ in cases of concern.
‘I think one of the biggest problems in Britain at the moment is that people are too frightened to intervene, sometimes because of the ethnicity of the person that they are concerned about,’ he said.
‘They think that if they put that particular person forward, they’ll be accused of racism.
‘Well, if that’s the case, it means that individuals such as this young man are walking time bombs and we can’t have walking time bombs going around.’
Rudakubana was born in Cardiff into a Christian family, and there is no evidence he was motivated by Islamic extremism – although his search history on his computer was wiped just before he left home to carry out his attack.
But there is evidence that he was obsessed with extreme violence in all its forms – having researched Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan and various killings and mass murders.
The killer appeared to have been sleeping in the living room of the messy Merseyside home
Ominous pre-cursor equipment for the production of poison was found across the house
Axel Rudakubana had enough raw materials to kill 12,500 people by the time police uncovered his home laboratory and a lunch-box in which he was refining ricin
Two Apollo Cerbera knives with 20cm blades, one still in its sheath, were recovered from the killer’s house days after he bought them on Amazon
A grisly array of hunting arrows was also recovered from the teenager’s armoury
A lethal bow was found in the bag where Rudakubana kept his newest knives
Immediately before the attack, he had viewed footage of the attempted murder of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Sydney in April.
His Prevent referrals included concerns raised by his school after he made comments about school shootings, posted pictures of Colonel Gaddafi on Instagram and expressed an interest in the London Bridge attack, the IRA, MI5 and the Middle East.
Meanwhile his phone contained images from conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Korea, as well as copious academic material relating to war and genocide.
Using the device, he had search history relating to Nazi Germany, ethnic violence in Somalia and Rwanda, and slavery.
He also had an American academic study of an al-Qaeda training document, which had been downloaded at least twice since 2021.
Nevertheless Mr Phillips called for the ‘right questions’ to be asked about Prevent, adding that ‘some minority communities’ are ‘at the heart’ of what is ‘going wrong’.
He cited the 2017 Manchester arena attack, in which a security guard noticed the bomber’s massive backpack but failed to intervene for fear of appearing to be racist.
In relation to the Southport attack, it has not been declared a terrorist incident because police could not find evidence of an ideology beyond a desire to commit mass murder.
Officers are currently embroiled in a battle to access Rudakubana’s laptop search history from tech giants including Google – but it has been warned this could take years.
Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Home Office minister Dan Jarvis said: ‘The Home Secretary set out last week our plans to carry out an end-to-end review of Prevent thresholds on Islamist extremism because we are concerned that referrals are too low and ideology, particularly Islamist extremism, followed by far-right extremism, continue to be at the heart of our approach to countering extremism and countering terrorism.
‘But as the horrific Southport attack shows, we also need more action on those drawn towards mixed ideologies and violence obsessed young people.’