Bebe King was six, Elsie Dot Stancombe was seven and Alice Dasilva Aguiar was nine (the same age as my daughter) when they finished up school in Southport Merseyside on the 26th of July this summer. The English school terms are much longer than here. The girls and their families probably did something fun that weekend, the very first weekend of the summer holidays. Please God they did.
After the weekend, on the Monday the 29th of July the girls attended a Taylor Swift themed holiday club at Hart Space Community Centre. When their parents dropped their girls off to the club that morning in fine weather they didn’t know when they said goodbye that it would be the last time they would ever see them alive. They would never ever see their daughter smile again. The next time their parents saw their girls was in a hospital morgue, identifying their dead bodies that had been destroyed by Axel Rudakubana in a ferocious knife attack.
Axel Rudakubana was 17 at the time and now 18. He entered the swiftie holiday club, a room full of dancing little girls and their slim teacher, with a knife. Fish in a barrel.
We can only imagine the horrible confusion and the absolute terror of the final moments of those girls. We can only imagine the scene when the police arrived. The blood, the screaming injured girls, the silence of the small dead bodies. As well as the three girls who were killed, eight more suffered stab wounds in the attack and five were left in a critical condition. All in all, Axel Rudakubana was charged with three counts of murder and ten of attempted murder. The job was done by noon.
The media in the UK and by extension here spent about 24 – 48 hours focussing on this monstrous attack on innocent life, this gruesome butchering of little girls. The order went out anyway, don’t you dare speculate as to the origin of the attacker; he is Welsh we were told. The well-known Rudakubana’s of Wales. In fact, his parents were asylum seekers who came from Rwanda.
Don’t you dare hint that this might have an Islamic connection, he went to a Christian school or something. In fact don’t you dare speculate at all. Don’t you dare say what you know to be true, namely that Axel Rudakubana had no business being in Britain, his parents had no business being in Britain, and most people of common sense know that. The angry and the speculative were told to just go home, shut your mouth and keep chanting that diversity is our strength.
Some people got angry but were uneducated and foolish, and when they took to the streets in their fury and criminality that gave the media the golden opportunity to accuse anyone who dared “speculate,” of being Right Wing Thugs, fascists and all-round scum. It was all Nigel Farage’s fault, who (correctly) said at the time ‘we are not being told the full story.’
The riots were all the fault of anyone who dares to object to immigration, mainstream right-wing politicians and media now being on the ropes and accused of ‘normalising fascism.’ Don’t even mention Islamic extremism, that would be misinformation, and the Old Bill will be around your place arresting you for an ill-advised tweet before you can say, how did it come to this.
Turns out there was an Islamic link. But then you knew that already, you knew it but were afraid to say. Must not speculate. On Monday, Rudakubana was charged with manufacturing the biological toxin ricin and having a study of a terrorist manual – namely Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual.
That’s interesting.
The Chief Constable said Rudakubana has been charged with offences under both the Biological Weapons and Terrorism Act, yet the incident had not been declared terror-related. ‘At this time counter terror policing have not declared the events of July 29 a terrorist incident,’ she said. ‘I recognise these new charges may lead to speculation. ‘The method by which Axel Rudakubana has been charged under the Terror Act does not require motive to be established.’
What kind of nonsense is this? We all must have a law degree now and split heads over what is terror related and what isn’t. If it is found after a trial that Rudakunbana was radicalised and carried out this attack because of that then it is a terror attack. Why the CPS charged what offence, probably for evidentiary reasons, is neither here nor there. “It’s not terror related.” File that under Rudakubana was Welsh and all the other piles of lies that pile up just after they pile up the dead bodies.
There we have it. Confirmation of that we knew already. Don’t worry though, just like they managed to pivot this story from butchered girls at holiday club to Far Right Thugs in 48 hours in the summer, this story conveniently enough broke on Tuesday evening, the day before a hugely important Labour budget that has had lots of ‘speculation’ for at least 2 months. (You are permitted to speculate over tax rates and rises. Those things are important, don’t you know.) So in the next 24 hours the girls will be forgotten again.
Bebe King was described by her parents Lauren and Ben King as a “sweet, kind, and spirited girl” who was “full of joy, light and love”. Her little sister Genie survived the attack but grows up without her big sister.
lsie Dot Stancombe brought “light, love and joy to so many lives”. A eulogy read on behalf of her parents said seven-year-old Isie had “brought them nothing but happiness”.
Sergio and Alexandra, parents of nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar, said their daughter was their “perfect dream child” who they will “never see grow up”. In a letter read out at her funeral they said, “being around you was a privilege. We cherished every milestone. You completed us.”
Never forget.