Merseyside police could not prove Rudakubana was a terrorist (Image: PA Wire/PA Images)
Detective Chief Inspector Jason Pye had a maximum of 72 hours to charge Rudakubana with murder under UK law after he was arrested at The Hart Space holding a knife and stood over the body of six year-old victim Bebe King.
Had officers or prosecutor found evidence he was part of a wider cell or motivated by a specific political or religious ideology they could have treated him as a terrorist and had seven days to investigate before charging him.
But the senior Merseyside Police detective said his actions simply did not meet the threshold under current legislation to be treated as a terror attack – despite owning the al-Qaeda terror manual.
Det Chief Insp Pye explained: “Because he’d been charged with the manual and it falls under the terrorism offence, it doesn’t mean he’s standing trial as a terrorist. There is just not that ideology there.
“There’s three elements (to be deemed a terrorist). He has absolutely caused terror – that’s the first element. I don’t think there’s any doubt that that’s what he’s done. He’s created mass murder.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt about that violence within the community. The third part has to be for that political or religious, and we just haven’t got it.
“What he has got, when we talk about images depicting violence etc, would suggest he’s moving away from Islam as much as Islam.
“So we have to just go with this extreme violence. It covers both sides. He’s got everything, from every religion to anti-Islam.”
A prison van believed to contain Axel Rudakubana arriving at Liverpool Crown Court for his sentencin (Image: PA)
Revealing how hard it was to explain to the heartbroken victims’ families, the detective admitted: “We have to work on the evidence that we’ve got, and that’s the problem.
“I’ve said this to the families. There’s nothing to suggest, there’s no signs, there’s no flags. The only thing I’d said to the families all the way through is the only defence he could go with is diminished responsibility.
“So very early on we’re thinking mental health, there’s got to be something here. We knew that those (three Prevent counter-terrorism referrals) were in the background, so we had to go at this as if we can negate that diminished responsibility.
“Then we had to go and get medical evidence for all of our 13 victims within that 72-hour period. If this is terrorism, It’s seven days to interview him in custody. We didn’t.
“All day long, I’d have been happy for someone to say it’s a terrorist attack. I was told about the manual on the Saturday, 3rd of August (three days after Rudakubana was charged). I’m saying, is this not now terrorism? But we’re confined to the law unfortunately.”
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Asked if Rudakubana changing his plea to guilty at the 11th hour was his sick attempt to cause more upset, shock and an exercise in control, the officer replied: “Your guess is as good as mine.
“Has he tried to control this all the way through? Is he that clever? I don’t know. My view is probably he’s trying to control it, but again, unless he was ever to speak up, we would never know.”
He also stressed that from “day one” he decided no child would be interviewed or have to give evidence in the case – to shield them from anymore evil from the traumatic attack.
The detective explained: “Probably the first decision I ever made was that there would be no child interviewed in this process. I didn’t need that. The evidence was so strong, I didn’t need that.
“There was a caveat to that, for us to gather the information through the parents, and if need be we could have used them as key witnesses.
“But there was no way I was ever going to put a child through the trauma of this.”