Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks during a press conference at the Downing Street Briefing Room in central London, Britain Jan 21, 2025, following the guilty plea of the Southport attacker Axel Rudakubana. [Photo/Agencies]
The United Kingdom's prime minister admitted on Tuesday the state had failed to prevent the terror-related murders of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year, and that the country would redefine terrorism as a result.
Keir Starmer said 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana's murders on July 29 of 6-year-old Bebe King, 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and 9-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar in the town of Southport in northwest England should not have been allowed to happen.
And he said the case should serve as a "line in the sand" after which government departments and law enforcement agencies change their thinking about who constitutes a terror threat.
Starmer was speaking after Rudakubana pleaded guilty on Monday to the three murders, and to the attempted murder of eight other children and two adults in the same incident. Rudakubana also pleaded guilty to producing the deadly toxin ricin and possessing a terrorist document titled Military Studies in the Jihad against Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual.
"The blunt truth here is that this case is a sign Britain now faces a new threat," Starmer said in a public statement from 10 Downing Street. "Terrorism has changed."
He said the new terror threat does not come exclusively from religious or political extremists but also from "loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms" with an interest in "extreme violence".
He made the comments after his government announced it will hold a public inquiry into the killings and Rudakubana's contact with agencies that should have prevented them.
Starmer said the public inquiry will seek to establish why Rudakubana, who had a long history of violence and who police officers had visited at least five times, was not identified as a possible terrorist and put through de-radicalization programs such as the Prevent program, despite having been referred to it on numerous occasions.
He also said the government will review the UK's terrorism laws and change them if necessary.
Starmer added that the inquiry will also look into whether the authorities released enough information about the killings in their immediate aftermath.
Critics have said the absence of hard facts about the suspect and his possible motives led to speculation online he was an asylum seeker and Islamic extremist, which triggered riots across the UK and violence directed toward asylum seekers.
It later emerged Rudakubana was born in the UK to Rwandan parents and that he did not follow a particular religion or ideology. The Crown Prosecution Service said after he pleaded guilty he was simply a "young man with a sickening and sustained interest in death and violence". Former classmates agreed, telling the BBC he also had an obsession with despotic figures from history, including Adolf Hitler.
Rudakubana will be sentenced on Thursday.
