Southport stabbings: Axel Rudakubana received second longest sentence in history and UN prevents harsher punishment, says Downing Street
Southport child killer Axel Rudakubana received the second-longest life sentence in English history and the government does not ever want to see him released, Downing Street has said.
Sir Keir Starmer’s official spokesman said ministers “share the public’s disgust at [Rudakubana’s] barbaric crimes” but said imposing a whole life order (WLO) was not possible because of international law.
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The 18-year-old was jailed for life with a minimum of 52 years on Thursday for the murder of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, in July last year at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
However, the sentence prompted calls for a change in the law on WLOs, which are usually only imposed on criminals aged 21 or over but can be considered for those aged 18 to 20 in exceptional circumstances.
WLOs ensure that an offender will die behind bars, whereas a life sentence imposes a minimum term that must be served in prison before they are eligible for parole, with convicts then remaining on licence if they are released.
Rudakubana was 17 when he launched the attack, and his sentence is the second-longest tariff on record after Hashem Abedi, the brother of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi, Downing Street said.
Abedi was sentenced to at least 55 years in prison for his part in the bomb attack that killed 22 people – a life order not being possible at the time because he was under 21.
(L-R) Victims Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King and Alice Dasilva Aguiar
Reforms passed by the Tories extended WLOs to young killers aged 18 upwards at the time of the offence.
Downing Street said on Friday ministers were not looking at further changes, claiming they were prevented from doing so by UN laws.
The spokesman did not name which acts the government was bound by, but Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that people under 18 should not be imprisoned for life with no chance of ever being released.
He said the government did not want to see Rudakubana leave prison and it was “likely he will never be released”.
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Could the Southport killings have been prevented?
Baby serial killer Lucy Letby and Sarah Everad’s killer Wayne Couzens are among the 70 people currently serving WLOs.
Those calling for a change in the law include Patrick Hurley, the MP for Southport, who has asked the attorney general to review Rudakubana’s jail term under the unduly lenient sentence scheme.
Outrage over the case has also promoted calls from two Reform UK MPs, Lee Anderson and Rupert Lowe, to bring back the death sentence, which was abolished in the UK in 1969.
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‘Our lives went with them – he took us too’
Number 10 said there were no plans to bring it back, citing parliamentary votes in recent history which have rejected capital punishment.
The government has launched an inquiry into the stabbings, which aims to give families “answers” about what happened in the lead-up to the attack.
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The prime minister has also said he will look at changing the law to recognise the “new and dangerous threat” of lone attackers not driven by one ideology.
It has emerged that Rudakubana was referred to the government anti-extremism scheme – known as Prevent – three times before the murders due to a fixation with violence.
He was also in contact with the police, the courts, the youth justice system, social services and mental health services.
Earlier, the UK’s most senior police officer warned thousands of young men were obsessed with violence, and called for this to be looked at as part of the review.
Rudakubana was sentenced after earlier pleading guilty to the murders, along with the attempted murders of eight other children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, class instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes.
He was also convicted of having a knife on the date of the killings, production of the deadly poison ricin, and possessing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism.
Judge Mr Justice Goose said he would have been given a whole life term if he had been nine days older.
The judge also said he “must accept” that the prosecution had made it clear the attack did not meet the legal definition of an act of terrorism because there was no evidence of attempting to advance a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
But he added: “His culpability for this extreme level of violence is equivalent in its seriousness to terrorist murders, whatever his purpose.”
Politics
Red Wall MPs should focus on two-child benefit cap rather than winter fuel, Harriet Harman says
Red Wall MPs should push for the two-child benefit cap to be lifted rather than a reversal of the winter fuel payment policy, Baroness Harriet Harman has said.
Baroness Harman, the former Labour Party chair, told Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast that this would hand the group a “progressive win” rather than simply “protesting and annoying Sir Keir Starmer” over winter fuel.
Earlier this week, a number of MPs in the Red Wall – Labour’s traditional heartlands in the north of England – reposted a statement on social media in which they said the leadership’s response to the local elections had “fallen on deaf ears”.
They singled out the cut to the winter fuel allowance as an issue that was raised on the doorstep and urged the government to rethink the policy, arguing doing so “isn’t weak, it takes us to a position of strength”.
Labour’s decision to means test the policy has snatched the benefit away from millions of pensioners.
But Baroness Harman said a better target for the group could be an overhaul of George Osborne’s two-child benefit cap.
The cap, announced in 2015 as part of Lord David Cameron’s austerity measures, means while parents can claim child tax credit or Universal Credit payments for their first and second child, they can’t make claims for any further children they have.
Labour faced pressure to remove the cap in the early months of government, with ministers suggesting in February that they were considering relaxing the limit.
Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby that this could be a sensible pressure point for Red Wall MPs to target.
She said: “It could be that they have a kind of progressive win, and it might not be a bad thing to do in the context of an overall strategy on child poverty.
“Let’s see whether instead of just protesting and annoying Sir Keir Starmer, they can build a bridge to a new progressive set of policies.”
Jo White, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw and a member of the Red Wall group, suggested that her party’s “connection” to a core group of voters “died” with the decision to means test the winter fuel payment for pensioners.
“We need to reset the government,” she told Electoral Dysfunction. “The biggest way to do that is by tackling issues such as winter fuel payments.
“I think we should raise the thresholds so that people perhaps who are paying a higher level of tax are the only people who are exempt from getting it.”
Pic: AP
A group of MPs in the Red Wall, thought to number about 40, met on Tuesday night following the fallout of local election results in England, which saw Labour lose the Runcorn by-election and control of Doncaster Council to Reform UK.
Following the results, Sir Keir said “we must deliver that change even more quickly – we must go even further”.
Some Labour MPs believe it amounted to ignoring voters’ concerns.
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One of the MPs who was present at the meeting told Sky News there was “lots of anger at the government’s response to the results”.
“People acknowledged the winter fuel allowance was the main issue for us on the doorstep,” they said.
“There is a lack of vision from this government.”
Another added: “Everyone was furious.”
Downing Street has ruled out a U-turn on means testing the winter fuel payment, following newspaper reports earlier this week that one might be on the cards.
A man from the US state of Virginia will spend over three decades behind bars after being convicted of sending crypto to the terrorist organization commonly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Federal Judge David Novak sentenced Mohammed Azharuddin Chhipa to 30 years and four months in prison on May 7 for sending over $185,000 to the Islamic State, the Department of Justice said on May 8.
Prosecutors said that from around October 2019 until October 2022, the 35-year-old Chhipa collected and sent money to female Islamic State members in Syria, which helped them escape prison camps and funded fighting.
The Justice Department said Chhipa would raise funds for the United Nations-designated terror organization through social media — receiving money online, or traveling hundreds of miles to accept donations in person.
He’d convert the money into crypto and send it to Turkey for it to be smuggled to Islamic State members across the border in Syria, prosecutors said.
A federal jury convicted Chhipa in December, finding him guilty on a charge of conspiracy to provide support to a terrorist organization and four charges of providing and attempting to provide support to a terrorist organization.
“This defendant directly financed ISIS in its efforts to commit vile terrorist atrocities against innocent citizens in America and abroad,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This severe sentence illustrates that if you fund terrorism, we will prosecute you and put you behind bars for decades.”
Chhipa tried to flee US during FBI probe
Prosecutors said that during the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into Chhipa, he tried to flee the country to escape prosecution and tried to hide his tracks through a series of actions seemingly aimed at confusing authorities.
According to a motion for detention filed in August, FBI agents searched Chhipa’s house on Aug. 2, 2019, and that night Chhipa drove to a bank, withdrew $1,800 from an ATM, and then went to a Taco Bell, where he paid a stranger for a ride to a relative’s house. The relative then drove him to a grocery store.
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Three days later, prosecutors said Chhipa “purchased a series of bus tickets using variations and/or misspelling of his name and recently created email accounts.”
He then travelled from Virginia to Mexico and onto Guatemala. He then bought tickets to fly from Guatemala to Panama, then onto Germany, and then to Egypt, but an Interpol Blue Notice was issued, and he was returned to the US.
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