Now that Axel Rudakubana has pleaded guilty to the murders of three young girls in Southport in the United Kingdom last year, reporting restrictions on his case have been lifted and reporters on both sides of the Irish Sea can report the truth: That his attack on those children was an act of Islamic terrorism, perpetrated in the name of global jihad against non-believers.
Rudakubana was found in possession of an ISIS terrorist training manual. He had prepared Ricin poison. The point of his crime was not to kill the three girls – and the many more he would have killed given the chance – but to attack the United Kingdom in the most shocking possible way in order to create the most hurt and emotional suffering amongst the population.
Oh and one more thing: Axel Rudakubana was a product of British education, and lived his entire life in the United Kingdom, while apparently hating the country and everything it stands for.
I have, recently, been watching FX’s excellent drama series Say Nothing (available on Disney +) which tells the story of two other young and infamous terrorists who attacked Britain. Specifically, the Price sisters, Dolours and Marion, who blew up the Old Bailey in 1983. In its own way, that bombing came from a more innocent time. The bombers phoned in a warning, and the only fatal casualty was a person who suffered a heart attack from the shock (though several others were blinded and permanently maimed).
The show is based on Dolours Price’s own testimony. It shows how and why she was radicalised and does not shy away from the excesses of the British state against the catholic community in West Belfast in which she grew up. Dolours Price reached her early 20s firm in the conviction that violence was the only solution, because – at least in part – of her life experiences.
I mention this because Axel Rudakubana lacks any such excuse. The British State, in truth, could not have done much more for him, or his family. It had taken in his parents, who fled to Britain from Rwanda. He was born in Cardiff. His family were housed. He was educated. When he showed signs of political extremism, he was referred for help on three occasions to the prevent scheme, which aims to de-radicalise young people. His crime was not motivated by any personal experience of the reasons he hated his own country, but by sheer devotion to a foreign and dangerous ideology.
It must be remembered that at every stage, the United Kingdom’s government tried to hide facts about this case from the public eye. The initial reaction of Merseyside police, which many have forgotten, was to assert that the attack was “not terror related”. This, really, is a scandal.
It is a scandal because the police had no reason to believe it to be true. Once they established the assailant’s identity, they would have known exactly what the Guardian reported yesterday: That Rudakubana had been referred to a counter-extremism programme on three separate occasions. Within hours, having searched his residence, they would have known that he was in possession of an ISIS terror manual. Further, given that they had Rudakubana in custody, there is no obvious operational reason to conceal what they believed his motives to be.
So why, then, were the public so grievously misled?
The only answer that makes sense is that the British authorities believed that revealing the truth – that Rudakubana was an Islamic terrorist of migrant heritage – would be deleterious to public confidence in the governance of the United Kingdom. And so, the state’s interest came before the public interest in knowing all the facts. That is the only explanation for the conduct of Merseyside police and the British Government which makes any sense.
But at what cost? There’s a basic question here which is as follows: Why should the public believe in future a police assertion that a particular incident was or was not terror related? When the state believes it is justified in misleading the public – or at the very least allowing false information to be the official record long after it knows that information to be false – then the public is certainly justified in not believing the state in return. By such a mechanism does all trust in authority ultimately collapse.
Yesterday, the UK’s Reform Party leader Nigel Farage described the handling by the authorities of this case as a “cover up”. Insofar as he is referring to the days after the incident, he can only be described as being indisputably right.
We all know the motives, too: The UK Government clearly feared the rioting and public disorder which eventually broke out regardless. It wanted to maintain the fiction that this was an attack by a UK citizen that was not terror related, at least in part for the purpose of being able to portray the rioters as mindless racists who had got the basic facts wrong. As it turns out, mindless racists or not, the rioters had the basic facts right.
And what’s more, the rioters had every right to be angry, even if they did not have the right to take it out on their own communities. The British State did cause this attack. It caused it when it accepted the Rudakubana family as refugees. It caused it when it ignored and did nothing to prevent their son’s radicalisation. It has caused it with years of a policy that pretends that all cultures and belief systems are sort of equally legitimate from a particular point of view. The British State is as guilty here as it is in the case of the Rotherham and other rape gangs, which it also downplayed, for largely similar reasons.
Axel Rudakubana will get justice, of a sort. The parents whose lives he ruined will never get any. And the British state, and those who still think Rudakubana and his like are less of a threat than some rioting skinheads, will have learned absolutely nothing.
There are too many in Britain, and in Ireland, who would take ten fellows named Rudakubana who think ISIS got a bad rap over a single chap nicknamed Porky with a St. George’s Flag tattooed on his belly, who professes to love Eng-er-lund. That’s where we are. That’s where, for the moment, we will remain. The lies are justified because Axel Rudakubana is not the enemy of the state. Those angered by him – they’re the real threat.