Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook of Southport stabbings suspect Axel Rudakubana (Image: PA)
Killers like Axel Rudakubana should never be released from prison , the daughter of murdered MP Sir David Amess has declared.
Rudakubana, 18, is not expected to receive a whole life order because he was under 18 when he stabbed Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine; Bebe King, six; and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven in a horrific, “sadistic” knife attack in Southport in July.
But Katie Amess, whose father David was murdered by Islamist terrorist Ali Harbi Ali, said the public should receive “a guarantee” that killers like Rudakubana “should never, ever walk free”.
She said: “There shouldn’t be a likeliness of the man spending the rest of his life in prison, there should be a guarantee that he should never, ever walk free because we can’t have people like that being released.
Katie Amess is campaigning for a public inquiry into Prevent (Image: Getty Images)
“And what kind of message does it send to anybody else that might be thinking of doing something and then not have to spend the rest of their lives in prison.”
Whole-life orders can normally only be imposed on criminals aged 21 and over, but can be considered for those aged 18 to 20 in exceptional circumstances.
However, although Rudakubana is now 18, he does not fall into this category as he was 17 when he committed his offences.
On Thursday, Ms Amess also repeated her calls for an inquiry into the Government’s counter-extremism Prevent programme, saying the parallels with her father’s case were “stomach-turning”.
Ms Amess said Prevent was not “foiling any terrorist attacks, it is allowing people to commit these crimes”.
Both Rudakubana and Ali, who stabbed Southend MP Sir David to death at a constituency surgery in 2021, had been referred to Prevent.
In Rudakubana’s case, those referrals were closed due to his apparent lack of a clear ideology.
Ms Amess said there should be an inquiry into “every single” case where someone known to Prevent goes on to kill.
She said: “Terrorism is terrorism. It doesn’t matter if you’re following Islamic terrorist ideologies or if you’re somebody on the far right that’s doing terrorist crimes…
“I am just very confused as to why I am not allowed an inquiry because they said it could compromise security if we released to the public everything that was known about the man and where they failed following up with him.
“Why am I not allowed that? But instantly they can provide it for a different terrorist incident. And rightly so, it should be provided for that incident. What happened is absolutely abhorrent. It is appalling.”
Ms Amess said cases like her own are not isolated. She said: “Every single person that has been failed by Prevent and by the government and also by the police force – I know the police weren’t to blame in that scenario, in that situation – they should also have an inquiry because I mean this is not isolated, it’s not just Southport and me. “
She said that she had looked into taking legal action against the Government to get answers. Ms Amess said: “It cost me tens of thousands I would say at this point. and then the coroner said it’s nothing to do with the courts.
“You need to ask the government. So I asked the government, the Conservative one. They ignored me, said go through somebody else. And then I asked the Labour government and they also said that they couldn’t help but that they were hiring a new commissioner for Prevent.
“And then all of a sudden instantly they can do a whole inquiry that says it’ll be robust, no stone will be left unturned. Why is that? What is in my case that the public and me aren’t allowed to know?”
She added: “I have been pushing and pushing and pushing for an inquiry from the Conservative government and from, now, the Labour Government.
“I tried to take the Government to court, I tried to take the police to court, and every door that I knock on is slammed in my face. Nobody wants to take accountability, nobody wants to delve into what happened and try and figure out how we can stop it.”
Following Rudakubana’s guilty pleas on Monday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced a review of the Prevent programme to be led by the former terror watchdog, Lord David Anderson KC.
Speaking in the Commons, Ms Cooper said Lord Anderson will start work “immediately”, adding: “His first task will be to conduct a thorough review of the Prevent history in this case to identify what changes are needed to make sure serious cases are not missed, particularly when there is mixed and unclear ideology.”Meanwhile, the Home Office will look at the thresholds used for Prevent referrals to see how violent behaviour can be “urgently” addressed.
It comes after officials in the department spent the summer investigating Rudakubana’s Prevent referrals and found, “given his age and complex needs”, they should not have been closed.