‘I’m desperately sorry’: Axel Rudakubana’s father accepts ‘share of the responsibility’ after Southport attack
Axel Rudakubana’s father has said he is “desperately sorry” for failing to challenge his son’s violent behaviour over the years before the Southport attack.
Alphonse Rudakubana told a public inquiry he was “frightened” of his son, who once poured a bottle of oil over him and said: “Trust me, I will kill you.”
He said Axel’s behaviour deteriorated in a “short period of time” until he was expelled from the Range High School in Formby, Merseyside, in October 2019 after admitting to carrying knives.
Two months later, he returned to attack a pupil with a hockey stick, while armed with a knife and was arrested and made subject to a referral order, aged 13.
Tributes left near the scene of the attack. File pic: PA
Alphonse said his son would have “random” violent outbursts, attacking him up to twice a day, but he became “conditioned to his behaviour” and “allowed him to abuse and assault me”.
“I’m ashamed of my response,” he said, adding his fear “prevented him from doing things a parent would normally do”, such as restricting internet activity and ordering weapons online.
“This had catastrophic consequences for which I’m desperately sorry,” he said.
“I accept I bear my share of the responsibility and that by not challenging his behaviour he was allowed to acquire dangerous weapons and view inappropriate content online.”
He said he and his wife Laetitia Muzayire “couldn’t set boundaries, we couldn’t say anything because it would lead to outbursts, and he was effectively out of control”. He also said he feared his son would be taken away.
Three children were killed in the attack last year. Pic: PA
Axel was referred three times to the government’s anti-terror programme Prevent between 2019 and 2021 because of concerns over his fixation with violence, including school shootings.
The criminal investigation showed he had images of mutilated bodies, torture, cartoons mocking Islam, antisemitic material, Nazi mass graves and material demeaning to women and girls, on his devices.
His father told the inquiry he was not aware of the material but admitted: “I had lost control, I had no authority as a father.”
“I was reduced to somebody who feeds him, does all he asks,” he said, adding: “I had no power to stop him from accessing anything he wanted online.”
The inquiry heard Axel received a delivery of a machete in June 2023 but his father said he didn’t confront him “because he would fly into a rage”.
Flowers and tributes to the victims. File pic: PA
Knife packaging found in washing machine after Rudakubana left home
His brother Dion said Axel would order packages online with money he made through his genealogy business which he feared “had something bad in them”.
He told the inquiry the last time his brother left home alone before the Southport attack was when he was caught carrying a knife on a bus in March 2022, telling police he was “going out to stab someone to get rid of his social media accounts”.
Dion said it would have seemed “logical” to Axel, adding: “It wouldn’t have been anyone specific, just a random person.”
A week before the mass stabbing, armed with a knife, Axel booked a taxi to his old school and tried to get in, but was stopped by his father.
(L-R) Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar. Pic: Merseyside Police
Axel Rudakubana, was aged 17 when he murdered Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, in a knife attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on 29 July last year.
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Eight other children, who cannot be identified because of their age, were also injured, along with yoga instructor Leanne Lucas, who was leading the dance class, and businessman John Hayes, who was one of the first people on the scene and tackled the killer.
Dion described the moment his brother left the family home that morning wearing a face mask and with the sleeves of his hoodie pulled down.
He told the inquiry how his mother showed him the knife packaging she found in the washing machine shortly after.
But his parents “didn’t seem alarmed” and his mother went back to bed so he took “comfort” from this and there was “no discussion about contacting the police”.
“We did not believe he intended to harm anyone” and thought if he was carrying a knife it was to “protect himself, not to harm others”, Dion said.
Asked about why Axel may have targeted the Taylor Swift-themed dance class, Dion suggested because “children are very valuable to society” and it would “hurt society very badly” if children were to be harmed.
The inquiry, which is being held at Liverpool Town Hall, continues on Thursday.
A foreign sex offender freed in error from Wandsworth prison has been arrested – as Sky News filmed the moment he was detained.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian national, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth in south London on 29 October.
Sky News approached Kaddour-Cherif moments before his arrest in Finsbury Park, north London, at 11.30am, but he claimed to be someone else.
He was then approached by officers next to a police van and arrested.
One of the officers said Kaddour-Cherif had been identified as the missing prisoner because he had a “distinctive wonky nose”.
Sky News witnessed Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest
Officers held his arrest picture next to Kaddour-Cherif’s head to confirm his identity
In the footage, the Algerian was shown shouting to people standing nearby in the street.
An officer then held up a photo of Kaddour-Cherif on a phone, comparing the image to the man arrested.
When officers asked him whether he knew why he was being arrested, Kaddour-Cherif replied: “I don’t know.”
Kaddour-Cherif, who was wearing a grey hoodie, black beanie and black backpack, said the mix-up at the prison was the fault of the authorities who released him.
“It’s not my f***ing fault”, Kaddour-Cherif shouted.
Kaddour-Cherif shouted at bystanders as officers arrested him
Kaddour-Cherif claimed to be someone else when he was arrested
The Prison Service informed the Metropolitan Police about the error six days later – and a huge manhunt for him was launched.
It is not yet clear why it was nearly a week between the release at HMP Wandsworth and the police being informed that an offender was at large.
“At 11.23am on Friday, 7 November, a call was received from a member of the public reporting a sighting of a man they believed to be Brahim Kaddour-Cherif in the vicinity of Capital City College on Blackstock Road in Islington,” a Met Police spokesperson said.
“Officers responded immediately and at 11.30am detained a man matching Cherif’s description. His identity was confirmed and he was arrested for being unlawfully at large.
“He was also arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in relation to a previous unrelated incident. He has been taken into police custody. The Prison Service has been informed.”
Kaddour-Cherif shouted it was ‘not my f***ing fault’ that he was mistakenly released
Kaddour-Cherif is a registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent exposure in November last year, following an incident in March.
At the time, he was given a community order and placed on the sex offenders register for five years.
He was then subsequently jailed for possessing a knife in June.
He was wrongly freed from Wandsworth prison. Pic: Met Police
Kaddour-Cherif came to the UK legally and is not an asylum seeker, but it is understood he overstayed his visit visa and deportation proceedings had been started.
He was accidentally freed five days after the wrongful release of convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu. Both Kaddour-Cherif and Kebatu were arrested in Finsbury Park.
A third man, fraudster William Smith, 35, was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth on 3 November, but turned himself in on Thursday.
After Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest, Justice Secretary David Lammy admitted there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle the crisis in the prison system.
“We inherited a prison system in crisis and I’m appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing,” he said.
“I’m determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.
“That is why I have ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures, and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons.”
A young woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann has been convicted of harassing the missing toddler’s family.
However, Julia Wandelt, 24, was cleared of stalking the couple.
A Polish national born three years after Madeleine, Wandelt said she suspected she had been abducted and brought up by a couple who were not her real parents.
She was having mental health issues at the time and had been abused by an elderly relative.
The relative looked like an artist’s drawing of a man who was once a suspect in the Madeleine case, which she stumbled across during internet research on missing children.
She went to Los Angeles and told a US TV chat show audience: “I believe I am Madeleine McCann.”
Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from the family’s rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007.
She had been left sleeping with her younger twin siblings, Sean and Amelia, while her parents dined nearby with friends, making intermittent checks on the children.
Madeleine is the world’s most famous missing child, the subject of three international police investigations that have failed to find any trace of her.
Wandelt claimed to have a blemish in the iris of her right eye, like Madeleine’s, and to resemble aged-progressed images of her.
Madeleine McCann went missing during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007. Pic: PA
Over three years, she attracted half a million followers on her Instagram account, iammadeleinemccan, and posted her claims on TikTok.
Police told her she was not Madeleine and ordered her not to approach her family, but she ignored the warning.
The McCanns and their children gave evidence in the trial at Leicester Crown Court, describing the upset Wandelt had caused them.
Her co-defendant, Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff, was found not guilty of stalking and harassment.
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Public safety is “at risk” because more inmates are being sent to prisons with minimal security, a serving governor has warned – as details emerge of another manhunt for a foreign national offender.
Mark Drury – speaking in his role as representative for open prison governors at the Prison Governors’ Association – told Sky News open prisons that have had no absconders for “many years” are now “suddenly” experiencing a rise in cases.
It comes after a man who was serving a 21-year sentence for kidnap and grievous bodily harm absconded from an open prison in Sussex last month.
Sky News has learned that Ola Abimbola is a foreign national offender who still hasn’t returned to HMP Ford – and Sussex Police says it is working with partners to find him.
WARNING: Some readers may find the content in this article distressing
Ola Abimbola absconded from an open prison. Pic: Sussex Police
For Natalie Queiroz, who was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner while she was eight months’ pregnant with their child, the warnings could not feel starker.
Natalie sustained injuries to all her major organs and her arms, while the knife only missed her unborn baby by 2mm.
“Nobody expected either of us to survive,” she told Sky News.
Babur Raja was sentenced to 18 years for attempted murder, but Natalie has recently been told that he’s set to be moved to an open prison four years earlier than planned.
“Any day now, my ex who created this untold horror is about to go to an open prison,” Natalie said.
Open prisons – otherwise known as Category D jails – have minimal security and are traditionally used to house prisoners right at the end of their sentence, to prepare them for integrating back into society.
With overcrowding in higher security jails, policy changes mean more prisoners are eligible for a transfer to open conditions earlier on in their sentence.
Natalie Queiroz was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner
“It doesn’t feel right, it’s terrifying, and it also doesn’t feel like justice,” Natalie said, wiping away tears at points.
Previously, rules stated a transfer to open prison could only take place within three years of their eligibility for parole – but no earlier than five years before their automatic release date.
The five-year component was dropped in March last year under the previous government, but the parole eligibility element was extended to five years in April 2025.
Raja, who is due for release in 2034, has parole eligibility 12 years into his sentence, which is 2028.
Under the rule change, this eligibility for open prison is set for this year – but under the new rules it could have been 2023, which is within five years of his parole date.
Another change, introduced in the spring, means certain offenders can be assumed suitable for open prisons three years early – extended from two years.
Natalie says her ex-partner Babur Raja caused ‘untold horror’
Natalie has been campaigning to prevent violent offenders and domestic abuse perpetrators from being eligible to transfer to an open prison early.
She’s had meetings with ministers and raised both her case and others.
“They actually said – he is dangerous,” she told Sky News.
“I said to [the minister]: ‘How can you make a risk assessment for someone like that?’
“And they went: ‘If we’re honest, we can’t’.”
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What’s wrong with our prisons?
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The government told Sky News that Raja’s crimes were “horrific” and that their “thoughts remain with the victim”.
They also insist that the “small number of offenders eligible for moves to open prison face a strict, thorough risk assessment” – while anyone breaking the rules “can be immediately returned”.
Mark Drury, a representative of the Prison Governors’ Association
But Mr Drury describes risk assessments as an “algorithm tick box” because of “the pressure on offender management units”.
These warnings come at an already embarrassing time for the Prison Service after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly freed last month.
This week, it emerged two others have been freed in error since then, amid new release checks.
In response to this report, the Ministry of Justice says it “inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons days away from collapse” – forcing “firm action to get the situation back under control”.
The government has promised to add 14,000 new prison places by 2031 and introduce sentencing reforms.
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