Police chief 'told not to reveal Rudakubana's faith'

Merseyside's chief constable has said she was told by a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) official not to release factual information about the man they had arrested on suspicion of carrying out the Southport knife attacks.

Serena Kennedy told MPs she had stressed that the UK's streets were "on fire" with violent disorder in the wake of three young girls being fatally stabbed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the town on 29 July.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, was last month jailed for a minimum of 52 years for murdering Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine.

Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson insisted there had not been any national orders not to reveal more details about Rudakubana.

In the wake of the Southport attacks, much speculation swirled on social media about the knifeman and his background.

A mosque in Southport was attacked following a vigil in the Merseyside town to remember the victims of the attack, in which eight children and two adults were also injured.

Kennedy told MPs that, despite violent disorder spreading to other parts of the UK, she was told not to release information about Rudakubana to journalists.

She said she had wanted to tell the media that Rudakubana was not a Muslim.

Rumours also wrongly claimed that Rudakubana had come to the UK by crossing the English Channel in a small boat.

In reality, he was born in Cardiff in 2006 to Rwandan parents who were Christian before the family eventually moved to Banks in Lancashire, where Rudakubana lived when he carried out the attacks.

Responding to Kennedy's claims of being ordered not to divulge more information to the media, Parkinson said: "As far as I am aware, this issue was never raised with the CPS again, and no statement was ever made by Merseyside Police about Rudakubana's religion.

"Had the issue been raised... I am sure that we would have been clear that we had no issues with the police releasing this information and that ultimately the decision was a matter for them."

Kennedy's account to MPs was centred on the events of 31 July.

By that evening, prosecutors had said that Rudakubana could be charged with murder and riots had broken out across parts of the country.

"By that time, we'd obviously had the disorder in Southport, and we'd seen, I think, three other cities experiencing disorder," the police chief said.

"I wanted to try and give as much information as I could during [a] press conference ... to help my colleagues around the country to try and deal with some of the misinformation and the disinformation."

Kennedy said she suggested telling the media about the religious background of both the suspect and his parents.

But she said the CPS's area deputy chief told her not to depart from the standard guidance in which the police say little about a suspect on the eve of them appearing in court.

"We had about a 90-minute discussion all around the use of the wanting to put the religion in the statement," said the Chief Constable.

"I won't say my exact wording, but it will have been along the lines of, 'I need to help my colleagues out, my fellow chief constables. Some of the streets of the UK are on fire, and I need to help them as much as I can.'

"But there were real concerns around me putting the religion into my press statement.

"It was very, very clear within that 90-minute conversation that the Crown Prosecution Service locally were very unhappy at our suggestion of including that.

"So based on that advice, we didn't include the suspect's religion in my press statement that I did at about midnight that evening.

"I'm subsequently aware that national CPS did email back into our Merseyside Police's comms team at 23:30 BST to say that they were happy for us to include the religion.

"But we, by that time, were downstairs and preparing for the press conference so that actually wasn't seen by ourselves.

"I was taking my direction from the deputy branch crown prosecutor, who was very clear that I couldn't include that in my press release, which is why that wasn't included."

Kennedy agreed with MPs who asked her if the 90-minute conversation had been "robust".

She said "red pens" were taken to her draft statement as she and her local CPS senior prosecutor disagreed.

"I wanted to give that information because there was disinformation out there," she said.

"We saw our Muslim communities across the country being subjected to hate crime.

"The deputy chief crown prosecutor was asking me 'Why are we straying away from what we are normally saying?'

"And that is when I replied... because this is a unique situation in terms of what my colleagues around the country were dealing with."

In a separate letter to MPs, Parkinson said the CPS at a national level had never told Merseyside Police that it could not disclose the suspect's religion.

He said: "I understand that during simultaneous, fast-moving discussions taking place between Merseyside Police and CPS colleagues at a local level, those colleagues, on being asked for advice, expressed a different view to the police as to whether the information should be released."

But he said it was never suggested that this was due to their concerns about possibly prejudicing any pending criminal trials.

Kennedy told MPs she could not say whether the violent disorder would have been stopped had more information been released about Rudakubana.

But she warned that the CPS's rules, governing what information is given to the media about suspects, were no longer working.

"I don't think [they take] account of where we are in terms of the impact of social media," she said.