'THEY FAILED TO PROVIDE WHAT MIGHT HAVE HELPED'

Anti-radicalisation scheme Prevent slammed for 'wrong decisions' over Southport and David Amess killers

- Chris Riches

ANTI-TERROR scheme Prevent "failed to provide" help that may have stopped the killers of three girls in Southport and MP David Amess, a review claims.

It blamed "wrong decisions" and said "lessons must be learned" from the tragedies. The report from independent Prevent commissioner Lord David Anderson KC said that genocide-obsessed Southport killer Axel Rudakubana should have been monitored and turned away from his evil actions.

He stressed the Government programme must focus on changing people who are fascinated by extreme violence, even if counterterrorism police do not find any evidence of an ideological motive.

Lord Anderson concluded: "Prevent failed to provide what might have helped [the killers].

"Whether different decisions might have spared their victims will never be known: both attacks came years later, and many imponderables intervened.

"But wrong decisions were taken; more should have been done; and from these failures, lessons must continue to be learned." Rudakubana, 18, was jailed for a minimum of 52 years for murdering Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, after he stormed into a Taylor Swift-themed workshop armed with a knife last July.

He wounded eight girls and two adults who tried to stop him.

Three times from 2019 to 2021 teachers had warned Prevent officials Rudakubana was obsessed with violence, yet each time his case was closed as he did not have an identifiable terrorist motive.

One expert said he should have been probed by Prevent's Channel project, which handles the most worrying individuals, when first referred but that never happened.

Alarm