“You’ll never be wasting our time,” reads the poster (above and below) featuring Matt Jukes (right), Head of the Counter Terrorism Police, the organisation responsible for the counter-extremism programme Prevent, standing next to a Manchester Arena survivor. Jukes has a stern look in his eyes, as if to warn would-be extremists that they can’t hide or evade justice from Britain’s toughest force.
Back in the real world, however, there are signs that all is not well with Prevent (to put it incredibly mildly). On Monday it was revealed that Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, had been referred to the programme three times between 2019 and 2021 due to his obsession with violence, but Prevent never heeded the warnings.
One of the referrals, according to the Daily Mail, “is thought to follow concerns about Rudakubana’s potential interest in the killing of children in a school massacre, but it was deemed that there was no counter terrorism risk”. As Rudakubana had no clear ideology, it appears Prevent didn’t quite know what to do with him – deciding that its counter-radicalisation scheme was unsuitable.
Details emerging this week show how inflexible Prevent is; that it couldn’t make sense of someone whose views and behaviours didn’t fit a neat mould, but we now know had downloaded an Al-Qaeda training manual and kept ricin, a poison, in his bedroom. No doubt the teachers who referred Rudakubana to the service three times felt they weren’t “wasting” Prevent’s time, only to receive the equivalent of “computer says no”.
Unfortunately Rudakubana’s case is part of a wider pattern in Prevent, where someone is referred multiple times, little to nothing happens and they go on to commit homicide – sometimes multiple times.
Another dreadful example of this was in 2020 when a Libyan asylum seeker, who’d been referred to Prevent four times, slaughtered three men in a Reading Park.
Since arriving in Britain in 2012, Khairi Saadallah was repeatedly arrested and convicted of offences such as theft and assault. While incarcerated he told prison staff he was part of Islamic State and wanted to “blow up” Britain. Why was he free to “execute”, as the authorities summarised it, these poor men? Where was Prevent? An inquest found the deaths were “probably avoidable”.
The year before, Usman Khan, another Prevent referral, stabbed five people, two fatally, at a learning conference in London Bridge. Khan “had a history of involvement in events of violence as a teenager”, including “acts preparatory to custody”, according to an inquest about the attack. Prevent kept an eye on him – preparing “general reports” about his status – but visits became “less regular” and “he became more socially isolated”.
On November 14th 2019, according to the inquest:
Two Prevent team officers visited Usman Khan at the suggestion of the MAPPA agencies to take photographs of his DVDs and video games. He became upset about this, which he apparently regarded as an invasion of privacy. This reaction provoked some concern on the part of investigating officers.
But not much seemed to happen between then and November 29th, when he travelled alone to the conference, armed with knives, and went on his killing spree.
Sir David Amess is yet another victim of those Prevent failed to stop. Ali Harbi Ali, who killed the Conservative MP, had “engaged” with the service between 2014 and 2015. Sir David’s daughter Katie Amess said that the authorities had “missed follow-up meetings” with Ali during this time, allowing him to “disappear out of the system.”
She told reporters: “Had we done the proper monitoring through this Prevent scheme, we could have stopped this. And it’s not just failed my family, it’s failing other members of the public and it’s failing other members of Parliament.”
In response the Home Office said that the Prevent system is a “vital tool to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”, but it appears to be anything but.
Moreover, the Conservative Government and now this one have completely ignored an independent review of Prevent, written by Sir William Shawcross, whose recommendations may, had they been implemented, prevented more loss of life.
It contained damning conclusions about the service, including that it had funded a group whose head was sympathetic to the Taliban, and that it had been trying to equalise the threat of Islamist extremism with the far Right – despite the former posing a much larger threat.
Shawcross added that Prevent had been consistently unable to determine how many community organisations receiving some of Prevent’s £49 million budget were having any impact.
Following the atrocities committed by Rudakubana, it’s time we called out the service that fails to prevent.
For more of Charlotte’s articles on Prevent and border issues, head to her Substack section ‘Bordering on Insane‘.
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If only he’d been posting memes on Twitter, all of this could have been stopped.
Of course every race/culture/group contains a criminal element, but some seem more prone than others and that is often exacerbated when they are placed in a culture alien to their own. A good way to “prevent” an increase in crime is to stop importing people from places that seem more prone to crime and behaviour that is contrary to our norms.
“Prevent” is like inviting stray dogs into your house then trying to (or pretending to try to) devise a way to pick up their dogshit more efficiently rather than kicking them out and stopping them coming in.
Seems the only thing they are preventing is the arrest of those who plan to kill.
Softly, softly, lest we upset some minority groups. Not unlike the grooming gangs.
It’s not racist to stop a murder, it’s not racist to name a person and their ethnicity (whatever it may be) who has committed a murder, unless of course its policy to not name anyone prior to charging and/or sentencing!
We need to stop pretending all is well, and this in no way means we must assume those similar to an assailant are dangerous or guilty.
Funnily enough tof I have just had a similar conversation with t’other half following a story about how a 12 year old boy had been stabbed to death by a 14 year old, on a bus.
I’m not sure what the purpose of this article is.
Is it suggesting that the UK’s Minority Report style pre-crime unit isn’t doing it’s job properly?
Or is it suggesting we shouldn’t have pre-crime units because they are never going to anticipate crimes effectively?
Just to be clear, the prevention of of crimes through surveillance and snitching (which is what this agency seems to rely on) is not only unbelievably dystopian, it also unworkable except under the most oppressive, totalitarian conditions and probably not even then.
Can we possibly revert to the adult minded society we used to have as opposed to the infantilised one we have now, and accept that in a country of millions, bad things are going to happen from time to time and that not every tragedy can be avoided?
Can we go back to tolerating a tiny amount of risk? Or are we going to have another “zero” project forced on us, in this case zero-risk.
We could start by not importing anymore foreign criminals, Stop immigration and sort out what we already have first!
Exactly.
All very good points.
Prevent seems to me an instance of “problem-reaction-solution” and making it work better (I doubt it’s meant to work other than as an excuse to enlarge state power over all of us) isn’t really the answer.
It’s hard to know what Ms Gill thinks. I suppose you could argue that unless you deport all these people we might as well try to stop them committing crimes – assuming you think “Prevent” is at all feasible or desirable – which is highly debatable.
I prefer crime to be prevented by catching as many criminals as possible and locking them up for a long time or deporting them so that (a) they have a high expectation of being caught and (b) the ones in prison cannot commit more crimes.
I am not in favour of burdening taxpayers by locking up foreigners for a long time.
I tend to agree – deport them and their country of origin can do what they want with them. Prison is a punishment/deterrent but to my mind the main benefit of prison is that it stops the person committing more crimes and deporting them has the same effect at least as far as the UK is concerned (as long as they don’t come back!).
Reasonable enough Stewart but the issue is how do we eliminate Turd World behaviours?
You are, of course, right Stewart that we do not want a pre-crime unit as you describe, especially in the hands of a totalitarian style leader like the current
Prime Minister, just as we don’t want non-crime hate incidents, but what would be useful is a Government sponsored deprogramming unit that can debrainwash those who have drunk from the cup of Islamist extremism. This is especially appropriate for prisoners who go in as Christians or atheists and come out as committed Islamists.
Absolutely no way. Ship ’em out. Once and done.
Ship ’em out is an admirable sentiment hux, but as we no longer live in Tudor times with the ability to banish from the Realm and some of the brainwashed (and not just those going through prison, but in all areas of life) are born and bred British citizens, we need a way to tackle them.
The law has evolved to the point where we cannot.
At the heart of the article is the mention of Prevent’s £49 million budget. (As we have all come to appreciate, politicians routinely spend our money as a cover for their own lack of ideas.) Out in the real world, a large part of that £49 million a year will be finding its way to various community leaders who are making a very good living out of telling the government what it wants to hear, “e.g. 95% of cases refered to it are being managed successfully”. The reality on the ground seems very different…
I couldn’t agree more. But then again I think that the vast majority of what the state does is grifting in sone way or other.
Even if they start with noble intentions (which I doubt; any noble intentions are almost certainly just ways of selling the scheme to the public), the quickly turn into self serving schemes for the people involved.
It may come out later. But why was this violent young man not on the radar of the police, social services, etc? Even if not a “terrorist,” he was a known danger, yet so far, it seems once Prevent says No, nothing further is done. Was he not referred to other agencies, or did they all sit on their hands?
I hope they can’t sleep at night, but I suspect they all have sloping shoulders.
He was! He had been referred three times.
I know. My reason for commenting was that every time Prevent turned down the referral, there didn’t seem to have been any joined-up thinking from them that they ought to have referred him to the police or another safeguarding authority.
Here he is when he was younger, being restrained in the classroom. Prevent are neither use nor ornament as they don’t exactly ‘do what it says on the tin’, what the heck is the point? Total shambles;
”Axel Rudakubana was a knife & child massacre obsessed monster. At 13 he was expelled from Range High School, Formby after calling ChildLine & threatened to bring a knife to lessons & attack his bullies.
A fortnight later he returned with a hockey stick with the names of a teacher & pupil he believed was bullying him. The pupil suffered a broken wrist.
Here he is being restrained by pupils.”
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1881994517408030820
Also, just read this. Can anyone confirm if this is true. Does anyone know of any exceptions if this is the rule? ‘Life’ must mean life, in this especially horrific case. Nothing else will suffice. This evil f**k will never be safe to be out on the streets;
”Adults under the age of 21 cannot receive a life sentence unless an exception is made under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.”
“as they don’t exactly “do what it says on the tin” ” At £49million that’s a very expensive tin…..
It requires a particularly serious crime for an adult between 18 and 21 to be given a whole life term. I don’t know if this can be applied as Rudakubana was under 18 when the offences were committed, but as it was only by a week or so maybe the judge will use common sense. Maybe.
”Some contents of Axel Rudakubana’s laptops were revealed by Police overnight.
They included cached images relating to wars and international conflicts including in Ukraine, Gaza and Korea – but he also took a disturbing interest in ethnic cleansing.
Documents found on the tablet covered a wide range of violent conflicts including the history of Nazi Germany, violence around Buddhism in Sri Lanka, clan cleansing in Somalia, Rwandan genocide, Iraq and Balkans conflict, victims of torture, tales of beheadings and cartoons depicting violence.
This might be anticipated in someone “obsessed” with violence. But examine some of the books and papers found in his house and a picture begins to be emerge:
The violence centres around genocide and ethnic cleansing..
Some of the titles include:
• ‘A place under heaven – Amerindian Torture and Cultural Violence’
•‘The Mau Mau War: British Counterinsurgency in Colonial Kenya’
•‘Death and survival during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda’
• ‘Examination of punishments dealt to slave rebels in two 18th Century British Plantation Societies’.
At first glance, there seems a disturbing anti-Anglo tone to some of these titles, focusing of the oppression of black and ‘indigenous’ people by white, colonial Europeans.
At school, Rudakubana was known to talk of “Britain needing a genocide like Rwanda” and, at a football match in which he played around the age of 15, he declared the need for a “white genocide”.
The potential role of racism, genocide, and eugenics in Rudakubana’s inspirations for the Southport massacre has been unexamined by the Press, and will be unheard by a public jury.
Evidence from Denmark suggests that second-generation immigrants from the Third World are in fact more prone to crime than their parents.
These children often suffer identity issues, untethered from the culture of the motherland but unable to see themselves in or value the culture of their birthplace.
Some come to idealise the ‘motherland’ to which they have never been, and come to resent the host nation in which they ‘find’ themselves.
Whilst correlation is not causation, members of the public and concerned parents are justified in posing questions of failed assimilation, radicalisation and ‘reverse-racism’ in immigrants arriving en-masse into Europe and the UK.
Harbouring concerns around public safety and cultural compatibility are asserted to be xenophobic, racist, or ‘far-right’.
The pronouncement by Keir Starmer that this attack was just another instance of “knife crime” felt to some like a deflection and only fuelled accusation of ‘managed narratives’ by a government who—for the sake of maintaining some semblance of social order—is being disingenuous about the nature of the crime and denying the systematic issues that appear to be either contributing to or facilitating similar deadly attacks.
Those that are enraged see no relation between this event and that of hooded youths stabbing each other in gang warfare or the unpremeditated stabbings arising from weapon-carrying culture. Such crimes are opportunistic whilst, from what information is available, the massacre in Southport appears to witnesses to have been a deliberate and targeted attack.
If we cannot have these contentious conversation now, then when?”
https://x.com/astor_charlie/status/1881997483771154876
Well said.
Little has been said about his father’s background and what he did in Rwanda but there is a chance he came here to escape being rounded up for being part of the genocide in Rwanda.
Essentially, the problem that “Prevent” (“Divert Attention” would be a better title) can’t fix is that the British Establishment is importing groups who regard us and our country as the enemy. Which is why these attacks won’t stop until mad mass unlimited immigration is stopped and reversed.
“Reversed.”
Exactly.
Prevent is political bunting for the Establishment so they can pretend terrorism is a fact of life like flooding or sink holes, then they can use it to pretend that anyone from any background is capable of terrorist acts. It’s far more important to the Establishment to have Tommy Robinson in solitary confinement at Belmarsh,
All this criticism of Prevent, but at least they were able to successfully prevent Jacob Rees-Mogg from carrying out any acts of violence or terrorist activities.
https://x.com/darrengrimes_/status/1881635560307273924?mx=2
Anyone else sick of Miriam Cates popping up all over GBNews as a presenter and interviewer, as though she had nothing to do with the last shambles of a Government. A Europhile who seems to have had a number of Damascene conversions to enable her to become a red wall MP. This morning to we had to listen to her interviewing the daughter of Sir David Amess, about her treatment by the Tories while she was seeking redress for how her father had been failed by Prevent and the security services, saying the Government did nothing to help her. The Government lawyer assigned ended up saying if you don’t like it, sue us.
I get what you are saying but GB news is not there to represent the Tory Party. Miriam Cates is there as a presenter, not as a Tory. But because of the Tories failure to be Conservative anymore and just be Labour Lite I ditched them and many others are doing the same. It can only get worse for them as Trump is showing them what being “Conservative” really means
If it has a catchy name it is a Government initiative and a bureaucracy – so right off the mark it will fail.
We have the Security Setvice (MI5), Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), various military intelligence units, Police Ant-Terrorism Squad as well as police intelligence units – why do we need Prevent, what are all the others doing?
Is it because all the Governmebt agencies are searching for the elusive “Far Right”?
Get a grip they identify these characters and then they groom them as assets. You think about the value of one of those assets.
Prevent is far too busy looking for non-existent Far Right extremists to look into the whole host of muslim terrorists and murderers.
This experiment by the Left that seeks to socially engineer all crime away rather than use punishment and discipline has seriously and monumentally failed. —–You gotta be cruel to be kind. I don’t mean Captain Bligh Cruelty, but I do mean making people realise from a very early age that their criminality will not be tolerated, not with classes, and education and coaxing but by strict law enforcement
I have a question:
What are the actual powers of Prevent.
when someone is referred to Prevent what happens?
Talking therapy?
24-hour surveillance?
Psychological evaluation followed by potential sectioning?