Police chief: I was told not to reveal Southport attacker’s religion
Merseyside chief constable told MPs on Tuesday that Crown Prosecution Service told her not to tell the public Axel Rudakubana was not Muslim
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Police were instructed not to tell the public that Southport attacker Axel Rudakubana was not Muslim, despite the local chief constable having flagged that Muslim communities were being targeted by rioters, she told MPs on Tuesday.
Merseyside police chief Serena Kennedy told MPs on the Commons home affairs select committee that she had wanted to release information about Rudakubana’s religion on 31 July 2024, the day after the riots began, “to try and deal with some of the misinformation and disinformation” that saw mosques and asylum seekers’ accommodation being targeted — but that a local branch of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had told her not to.
“I wanted to give that information because obviously there was disinformation out there and we saw our Muslim communities across the country being subjected to hate crimes,” she said. “Alone in Merseyside, we would normally get, in that period, about 130 hate crimes. In that week, we saw that shift up to about 170.
“We know the impact it had both locally on our Muslim communities and nationally. I wanted to be able to get out that point that at that time, there was no suggestion that the suspect in custody was from a Muslim faith.”
She added that she believed releasing the information would also help police forces around the country, who were dealing with their own riots.
Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were killed and eight other children and two adults were seriously wounded when Rudakubana stabbed them at a dance class on 29 July 2024 in Southport.
In January, Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 52 years after pleading guilty to three counts of murder and 10 of attempted murder.
The aftermath of the Southport attacks saw Islamophobic and anti-immigration riots spread across towns and cities in the UK including in Southport, Hartlepool, Manchester and Liverpool. This came after misinformation was spread online about the identity of the suspect, with false claims that the attacker was named Ali Al-Shakati and that he was an asylum seeker who had come to the UK by boat. In fact, Rudakubana was born in Cardiff to Christian parents.
Kennedy’s decision to omit details about Rudakubana’s religion from a press statement issued on 31 July followed a 90-minute meeting with the local CPS branch’s deputy crown prosecutor and head of communications, she told MPs on Tuesday.
“I was taking my direction from the deputy branch crown prosecutor, who was very clear that I couldn’t include that in my press release,” she told MPs.
Kennedy added that, at this point, police were becoming increasingly concerned about riots spreading to other areas. “I wanted to try and give as much information as I could during the press conference that we were going to do around the charges to help my colleagues around the country to try and deal with some of the misinformation and the disinformation,” she said.
But despite her concerns, Kennedy told the committee that she was advised by the CPS to be “mindful” of information released, and to bear in mind contempt of court rules which prohibit influencing the outcome of a court case. A draft copy of Kennedy’s press release was also sent to the national CPS, including information about Rudakubana’s family’s religion, but these were removed after the intervention of the local prosecutors.
MPs on the committee, chaired by Conservative MP Karen Bradley, were told that the national CPS did eventually write to Merseyside police some time between 11pm and midnight on 31 July confirming that it was acceptable to reveal details of Rudakubana’s religion after all.
But by this point, Kennedy said, she and her team were about to deliver a late-night press conference on the violence and did not see the email.Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions and head of the CPS, wrote in a letter to the committee that “colleagues, on being asked for advice, expressed a different view to the police as to whether the information should be released”, adding that “we would have been clear that we had no issues with the police releasing this information and that ultimately the decision was a matter for them”, had the service been asked again.
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