The charges against Axel Rudakubana over possession of the deadly poison ricin and an al Qaida training document were not made public for three months after he murdered three girls at a holiday dance class.
Police knew within four days of the knife attack in Southport, Merseyside, on July 29 that a substance found in the teenager’s bedroom was ricin, but the charge against him for having the substance was not publicly confirmed until October 29.
It was then revealed that he was also in possession of an al Qaida training document.
The delay in bringing the charges, despite questions from media outlets including the PA news agency over the searches at his home, led to accusations of a cover-up from public figures including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
The criticism followed widespread rioting during which right-wing commentators on social media claimed that the public was not being told the whole truth about the attacks, including false claims that Rudakubana was an asylum seeker.
Senior officers said the murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were not classed as acts of terrorism and that an ideology is critical in deciding whether a crime counts as terrorism.
The Guardian reported that Rudakubana had been referred to the Government anti-extremism scheme Prevent three times before the murders due to concerns about his obsession with violence, but that he was found not to be motivated by a terrorist ideology.
He was first referred in 2019 when he was just 13 years old, after he had viewed material relating to US school shootings, the newspaper said.
In December 2024, the senior national co-ordinator of UK counter-terrorism policing, Vicki Evans, said investigators are increasingly seeing suspects who have accessed a range of violent material but that a specific ideology which may have motivated an attack can be extremely difficult to pin down.
She said officers are seeing suspects with search histories like “a pick and mix of horror”.
This could include material linked to school shootings, mass violence, extreme pornography, pro-incel material, and misogynistic and racist content.
Sometimes the harrowing material tips over into terrorism, and other times not.
Rudakubana’s possession of an al Qaida manual was a crime by default regardless of his own ideology, as was possession of ricin.
Matt Jukes, head of UK counter-terrorism policing, hit out at Mr Farage’s comments at a Westminster conference in November.
He said: “It is unhelpful when people, who I suspect fully well know what the constraints are on reporting during ongoing legal proceedings, point to limited disclosures or limits on what can be said as evidence of cover-up and conspiracy.”
In an entry on X, formerly Twitter, in the wake of the guilty pleas, Mr Farage wrote: “Axel Rudakubana has pleaded guilty to murder and a terrorism charge.
“Will we ever find out the whole truth?”
