Former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has accused authorities of suppressing crucial information about the Southport dance class killer, claiming they presented him as "a Welsh choir boy" to the public.
Speaking on GB News, Kwarteng said officials "clearly knew things about the killer which they suppressed" in the aftermath of the attacks.
"At the time of the murder, they essentially were presenting the killer as a Welsh choir boy," he said.
The former chancellor suggested there was a deliberate withholding of information about Axel Rudakubana's background and potential motivations.
GB News / CPS
"Either they suppressed it for whatever reason, and we need to get to the bottom of it, or it was a cover up because they felt that in that very patronising way, they felt that people couldn't handle that information," Kwarteng said.
Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty earlier this week to murdering three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last July.
He is due to be sentenced today at Liverpool Crown Court - while his crimes could warrant a whole life order, this cannot be applied as he was 17 at the time of the offences.
Kwarteng claimed Merseyside Police were instructed by "people on high" not to release information they had about the case.
Axel Rudakubana will be sentenced in court today for the Southport attack
CPS/PA"What was so crazy about that was that it actually stoked the very thing that they wanted to avoid because people were kept in the dark," he said.
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The former chancellor pointed to what he called an "obvious double standard" in how the case was handled.
"Picture a situation where the terrorist, the killer, had been a white teenager who had been found with white supremacist literature, who then went out and killed three girls of ethnic origin," he said.
"There wouldn't be this debate. They would have denounced it," Kwarteng added. He also criticised how Rudakubana had "slipped through the net" despite being repeatedly referred to Prevent.
Starmer has defended his position on withholding information about the Southport killer. The Prime Minister insisted he was following "the law of the land" to prevent the case against Rudakubana from collapsing.
Kwarteng questioned how the 18-year-old 'slipped through the net' after being referred to Prevent three times
GB News
"You know and I know that it would not have been right to disclose those details," Starmer told reporters. "The only losers if the details had been disclosed would be the victims and the families because it ran the risk the trial would collapse."
Rudakubana faces a life sentence, with a minimum term to be set by the judge before he can be considered for release. Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said investigations revealed "a man with a unhealthy obsession with extreme violence" but noted that "no one ideology was uncovered."
Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor Ursula Doyle described it as "an unspeakable attack" that turned what should have been a day of "carefree innocence" into "a scene of the darkest horror."
"It is clear that this was a young man with a sickening and sustained interest in death and violence," she added.
