Axel Rudakubana: Review finds child killer’s obsession with murder, terror was labelled interest in world news

Child killer Axel Rudakubana’s obsession with violence should have been given more weight, a review of failures by the Prevent counter-terrorism scheme is set to find.

The “sadistic monster” had been referred to the Government’s anti-extremism programme three times over his interest in terrorist bombings and mass shootings.

But each time his file was marked “case closed” because there was no evidence that he was “linked to an ideology or vulnerability to radicalisation,” according to a leaked report.

Instead, the teenager’s fascination with violence was put down to an interest in world news and he was referred back for monitoring by social workers and health services.

This happened despite a new category for youngsters showing signs of “mixed, unstable or unclear ideology” being quietly added to Prevent seven years before his deadly knife attack last summer.

After failing to attend college and rejecting offers of mental health support, on July 29 Rudakubana killed three young girls and injured eight others at a dance studio in Southport.

On Sunday, UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that “no stone should be left unturned” in a public inquiry announced by the Prime Minister into the stabbings.

“The man was referred three times to Prevent, he’d been found carrying a knife on multiple occasions, and he’d attacked a boy he was at school with, and yet he was able to slip through the system,” she told Trevor Phillips on Sky News.

“It is absolutely essential that we learn lessons... to stop anything like this ever happening again.”

After Rudakubana, 18, was jailed last week for at least 52 years, a review found he should have been referred to the Channel deradicalisation process, which follows a Prevent assessment.

It said too much weight was placed on his lack of ideology without his obsession with extreme violence being considered when Prevent rejected his case, The Sunday Times reported.

The finding comes after a lawyer for the families of victims Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, slammed “systemic failures” and missed opportunities before the attack.

It also piles pressure on Prevent after it emerged that a tiny proportion of teenagers assessed as having “no ideology or counter-terror risk” were referred to Channel.

While 2,489 such referrals were made in the year to last March, just 32 were adopted by the Channel scheme. By contrast, of 1,314 referrals for extreme Right-wing concerns, 230 stayed in the system for further intervention.

The Sun on Sunday found that in the past four years, of 1,830 children aged 11 to 17 referred to Prevent but classed as having no clear allegiance to a terror group, just 228 cases were admitted.

Dame Karen Bradley, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said: “We are seeing more and more young men and boys... searching the internet and developing a propensity for violence, and for some reason they are falling through the net.”

Writing in The Sunday Times, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the review would address cases that “don’t pass the Prevent threshold but need urgent action and just go into a void”.

On Sunday, the Home Office said: “We do not comment on leaks.”