Make cowardly killers face truth

IT SHOULD have come as no surprise to anyone that the apology for a human being otherwise known as Axel Rudakubana behaved so atrociously in the dock on Thursday.

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He had been allowed to show complete contempt for proceedings from his very first court appearance.

On one level, of course, it doesn't matter. Rudakubana has been tossed into the near-bottomless trash bin of a 52-year minimum prison sentence and won't even come up for parole until he's 70, when it's almost certain to be denied. He's going to disappear from view, utterly and completely, for the rest of his pointless existence And yet it does matter. His contempt for court was, of course, contempt for his little victims, their grieving families, and – and this matters too - for you and me and everyone in decent society.

And I believe it could have been addressed and resolved, right from the outset.