Axel Rudakubana’s referral to the UK counterterrorism scheme was closed prematurely, three years before he murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, a review has found.
An independent report published on Wednesday said Rudakubana should have been referred to “Channel”, the strand of the government’s Prevent programme that deals with the most high-risk cases.
Rudakubana — who was sentenced to life with a minimum of 52 years in prison last month for the murders of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine, in July 2024 — had been referred to Prevent on three separate occasions between December 2019 and April 2021 by teachers at schools he attended.
Security minister Dan Jarvis told MPs the review had “found the referral was closed prematurely and there was sufficient concern to keep the case active while further information was collected”.
Independent reviewer Anthony Jenkyn found Rudakubana had described the 2017 Manchester arena terror attack, in which 22 people were killed, as “a good thing” as early as 2019, and asked to have a picture of a severed head during an art lesson in the days before his first referral to Prevent.
He also had a “hit list” of people he hated, talked about “stabbing people” and made comments about “getting teachers murdered”, the report noted.
Jarvis said officials had focused too much on Rudakubana’s lack of “distinct ideology” and ignored his obsession with school massacres, “to the detriment of considering the perpetrator’s susceptibility, grievances and complex needs”.
“At the time the perpetrator could have fallen into the mixed, unclear or unstable category due to his potential interest in mass violence,” he added.
While Prevent officers had complied with Home Office policies, the review criticised their “subjective decisions” and questioned why they did not refer Rudakubana to Channel — a group of police, social workers and mentors who work with those deemed at highest risk of violent extremism.
“The nature of multiple . . . referrals for the same person over a 17-month period, all with potential content that could be seen as Prevent relevant and high levels of susceptibility, should have warranted increased scrutiny,” the report found.
Further shortfalls identified included the misspelling of Rudakubana’s name on two out of three of his referrals, and the closure of one referral before the search history of his devices and those he used at school had been checked.
The review also drew attention to the fact that Rudakubana’s autism diagnosis, which Prevent officers had considered separately to his other behaviour, could be a vulnerability that made him “susceptible to being drawn into terrorism”.
A Financial Times investigation last year found that 13 per cent of police counterterrorism work involves people with autism, a condition that affects only 1 per cent of the population.
The Home Office has since announced a strategic review to improve the support given to those referred to Prevent “who are neurodivergent or suffer from mental ill-health”.
One of the wider problems identified by the review was that guidance at the time from the Home Office and Counter Terrorism Policing to Prevent staff on dealing with people who have a mixed or unclear ideology was potentially “ambiguous”.
Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff to Rwandan immigrants and 17 at the time of the killings, was not charged with an act of terror, although he was convicted of possessing terror-related material.
Police and prosecutors said current legislation did not allow for a terror charge due to Rudakubana’s apparent lack of ideology.
Since Rudakubana’s referral, new categories relevant to his case have been introduced, including ‘Fascination with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks’.
Last month, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer vowed to change the law if needed to combat the terror threat from “loners, misfits [and] young men in their bedrooms”.
A public inquiry into the killings, which sparked a wave of riots across the UK, would “not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure”, he added.
