Rwandan heritage teen Axel Rudakubana unexpectedly pleaded guilty to all charges including the murder of three young girls and terrorism related offences at the first day of his trial on Monday, prompting Nigel Farage to again express concerns about the coverups he says surrounds the deadly Southport attack.
There will be no trial of 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana after he unexpectedly pleaded guilty to all charges put before him in Liverpool Crown Court. The plan had been for the trial proper to begin on Tuesday morning, meaning the families of the deceased were not in court to hear the surprise plea at this morning’s preparatory hearing.
Rudakubana responded “guilty” when three charges of murder, ten of attempted murder, one of possessing a knife, one of producing a biological toxin, and one of possessing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. He has admitted killing six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar.
Most of his other victims cannot be named due to their right to privacy as children, but two of the ten victims of attempted murder were adults, a dance teacher who shielded the children from his blows, and a local businessman who ran to their aid.
Rudakubana will appear in court again on January 23rd for sentencing. The Judge, Mr Justice Goose, told Rudakubana in court this morning it would be “inevitable” that a life sentence would be imposed.
Speaking outside the court a spokesman for the Criminal Prosecution Service said the attack was a “meticulously planned rampage” and that Rudakubana is a “young man with a sickening and sustained interest in death and violence. He has shown no signs of remorse.”
While Rudakubana will certainly now go to prison, many questions over the attack remain. Indeed, as acknowledged by UK state broadcaster the BBC answers to the mystery of his motivations may now never be answered. They stated: “Some answers may have emerged from the trial – or they may not. Now, after Axel Rudakubana’s guilty pleas this morning, there will be no trial.”
British Member of Parliament and leader of the Reform UK Party and the decades-long Brexit movement Nigel Farage, who has previously expressed serious concerns that his absolute right to freedom of speech as a parliamentarian had been curtailed over this case, again expressed concern over a cover-up on those issues as the news of a guilty plea emerged today.
Speaking from Washington D.C., where he is to attend the inauguration of once and future President Donald Trump today, Mr Farage told The Daily Telegraph: “I was pretty certain from what I had been told very early on that this was a terrorist-related attack. I wanted to ask questions in Parliament about what the authorities knew about this man, but my rights of parliamentary privilege were taken away and I was not allowed to say anything, which is extraordinary. I wasn’t even allowed to ask any questions in Parliament, and the suggestion that it was because of ongoing court proceedings is completely wrong. This reflects very badly on the Prime Minister.”
Mr Farage said it is his understanding that there has been “a gigantic cover up from day one” but refuse still to classify the attack as terrorist for political reasons.
Adding to Mr Farage’s positions was the revelation from the Press Association that while police discovered Rudakubana’s attempts to create biological warfare agent Ricin and his Al-Qaeda training manual within days of the attack, these details weren’t made public for several months. Mr Farage has previously asserted this delay, which is now officially known, existed and had possibly been a deliberate move as part of the government’s management of the public’s feelings about the mass stabbing of young children.
Farage said the riots that followed the stabbing last year were not suppressed in any way by government censorship, but rather had been fuelled by the information vacuum created by Downing Street. “What really led to the riots was the withholding of information… The public are capable of absorbing the truth about terrorist attacks, we have had them before without them causing riots”, he said, stating there had not been riots after terror attacks such as the Westminster Bridge attack where the facts were made public quickly.
Also made public for the first time today are new details about Rudakubana’s school days and his activity in the weeks leading up to the killings. While it is emphasises by the Press Association that these facts have not been proven, it is at least claimed that Rudakubana had said he was “racially” bullied at school and carried a knife in the classroom for self-defence. It is stated he was excluded from school for the knife, and staff at other schools he subsequently was enrolled in — although in one case his attendance was recorded as just one per cent — expressed concern about his violence towards others.
Rudakubana returned to his former school once and attacked someone there with a hockey stick, allegedly a “a former bully or someone he had a grievance with”. He attempted to return to the school again just a week before the Southport stabbings but was restrained by his father, it is stated.