Any suggestion that Sir Keir Starmer was not told Southport killer Axel Rudakubana was in possession of the deadly poison ricin is “absurd”, Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf has claimed.
The 18-year-old was jailed last week for a minimum of 52 years in prison after being convicted at Liverpool Crown Court of ten counts of attempted murder, producing ricin, and possessing an al-Qaeda training manual.
Rudakubana launched his murderous rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last year, fatally stabbed three young girls and injured ten others.
After his arrest, authorities found ricin and extremist materials in his possession. The judge noted that a whole-life order was not applicable due to Rudakubana being nine days shy of his 18th birthday at the time of the offences.
Speaking to GB News, Mr Yusuf argued that since it was implausible to believe Mr Starmer was oblivious, the decision not to reveal the existence of the toxin stemmed from what he called a “two-tier attitude” whereby “certain faiths are basically given differential treatment".
Rudakubana’s appalling rampage sparked riots across the UK after false rumours spread on social media suggested the teen, who was in fact from a Christian family, was a Muslim migrant who had arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel.
Speaking about the tragedy, Mr Yusuf said: “It is absurd…that the Prime Minister of this country would not have known almost immediately about the ricin, about the al-Qaeda materials that have been downloaded to this monster's computer, the materials he had been studying.
“People have gone to jail, actually, for spreading, quote, misinformation that in the passage of time has transpired to be true.
“Nigel Farage - I was in the room when he recorded the video in which he was the only political leader in this country to ask the correct questions. He asked was this person potentially on some kind of list.
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“We now know he was referred to Prevent on three separate occasions. Prevent failed to take any appropriate action, and, frankly, allowed this monster to carry out this atrocity.”
He told Camilla Tominey Show: “We wanted for those lovely little girls to still be alive today. And that should have been the case, given how much was known to people who were paid by the taxpayer, whose moral obligation it was to ensure that such attacks do not happen.
“So, the reality is, if a suspect or somebody of suspicion is referred to Prevent on three separate occasions, and then nothing is done about it, this is going to result in atrocities like this happening.”
He added: “I don't think there's any doubt, if you are an objective observer of the facts, that unfortunately, there's been an attempt consistently, firstly under the Tories and now under this Labour government, to ensure that this sort of two-tier attitude that occurs where certain people…and certain faiths are basically given differential treatment by authorities and this is consequence.
He added: “My sense of what has happened, and this is shared by the leadership of our party, is that the catastrophic number of people coming here, both legally and illegally, the failure of people to assimilate effectively and frankly, the proliferation of extremist ideology that has been allowed to go on, that has been allowed to proliferate by authorities.
“They would have been concerned that had the identity and the details of this attack been known, that it would have caused civil unrest.”
Mr Yusuf concluded: "The fact of the case that this man had enough ricin to kill thousands of people, the fact that he had downloaded al-Qaeda materials, those are facts of the case that we know.”
Express.co.uk has contacted Number 10 for comment.
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