Legal hurdles The difficulty of declaring a terrorist incident

Police and crime correspondent

- Vikram Dodd

So far, those with closest knowledge of the Southport case cannot answer these questions: what cause was Axel Rudakubana trying to advance and who was he trying to influence when he unleashed his atrocity? As such, police cannot declare it a terrorist incident.

The UK primarily combats the threat of terrorist violence through civilian law enforcement bodies governed by laws, so there needs to be a legal definition of terrorism.

The first article of the Terrorism Act 2000 defines it as "the use or threat of action where...the use or threat is designed to influence the government...or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause".

The declaration of a terrorist incident is made by the police, and their senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism. That role is held by Vicki Evans, who is understood to have spent considerable time assessing whether the Southport attack met the legal definition.