LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Tuesday that the killing of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class must lead to “fundamental change” in how the British state protects citizens and a reckoning with new threats from violent individuals that test the traditional definition of terrorism.
Starmer said the government must also answer “tough questions” about how authorities failed to stop a violence-obsessed teenager before he stabbed three young girls to death in the seaside town of Southport in July.
In a televised statement, the prime minister said that a public inquiry would tackle failings in the case of Axel Rudakubana, who injured another eight children, their instructor and a passer-by.
“The tragedy of the Southport killings must be a line in the sand for Britain,” Starmer said.
Rudakubana, 18, unexpectedly changed his pleas to guilty on Monday, the first day of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court. He is due to be sentenced on Thursday.
His guilty plea means that details that had been withheld from the public to try to ensure a fair trial can now be reported. They include the fact that Rudakubana was referred three times to the government’s anti-extremism program, Prevent, when he was 13 and 14, and was in contact with multiple state agencies — all of whom failed to spot the danger he posed.
The attack occurred on the first day of summer vacation when two dozen little girls were in a class to learn yoga and dance to the songs of Taylor Swift. What was supposed to be a day of joy turned to terror and heartbreak when Rudakubana, armed with a knife, intruded and began stabbing the girls and their teacher.
He killed Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6. Eight other girls, ranging in age from 7 to 13, were wounded, along with instructor Leanne Lucas and John Hayes, who worked in a business next door and intervened.
The killings in the northwest England town triggered days of anti-immigrant violence across the country after far-right activists seized on incorrect reports that the attacker was an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in the U.K.
Rudakubana was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents.
Critics have accused Starmer’s government of withholding information about the suspect in the aftermath of the attack. Starmer said there was no conspiracy of silence, just a desire to see justice done.
“The only losers if the details had been disclosed would have been the victims and the families because it ran the risk the trial would have collapsed,” he said.
Police and prosecutors also face questions about why the case was not labeled terrorism, despite Rudakubana facing charges of possessing an al-Qaida manual and the poison ricin alongside charges of murder and attempted murder.
Starmer said the case showed that “terrorism has changed” and the law might need to be changed to deal with “a new threat … (from) acts of extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms.”
“It is a new threat, it’s not what we would have usually thought of as terrorism when definitions were drawn up when guidelines were put in place, when the framework was put in place and we have to recognize that here today," he said.
“It's clearly extreme violence. It's clearly intended to terrorize."
Jill Lawless, The Associated Press
