The lead detective probing the Southport attack has revealed he wanted the mass murder to be declared terrorism.
Det Chf Insp Jason Pye revealed he would have been ‘happy’ for the July 29 outrage to have been classed a terror attack ‘all day long’ as it would have given him more time to question then 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana.
It follows growing controversy about whether the dance studio atrocity should have been classified as an act of terrorism.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage this week accused the Government of a ‘gigantic cover-up from day one’, claiming the authorities ‘refused to class the murders as terror-related for fear of the reaction there might have been’.
Prosecutors have insisted Rudakubana’s crimes did not meet the legal requirement to be deemed terrorism as he was not motivated by a known political or religious ideology.
But jailing Rudakubana for life today at Liverpool Crown Court, the judge, Mr Justice Goose, said his ‘sadistic’ attempt at mass murder was ‘equivalent’ to an act of terror.
DCI Pye revealed how his team of investigators wrestled with why it wasn’t declared a terrorist incident, saying officers discussed how the massacre ‘looks like it’ and ‘sounds like it’.
Saying the killer had ‘absolutely caused terror’, he admitted that even relatives of the victims of last July’s atrocity had asked tough questions about whether police were ‘hiding’ a terror motive.
Mr Justice Goose said he ‘must accept’ that the attack ‘does not meet the definition of an act of terrorism within the meaning of the legislation as there is no evidence the purpose was to advance a particular political or ideological cause’.
‘However, his culpability is equivalent in its seriousness to terrorist murders, whatever his purpose,’ he added.
On Tuesday Sir Keir Starmer said the law may need reforming, saying ‘terrorism has changed’ and the threat from ‘loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom’ needs to be taken more seriously.
Speaking about the early hours and days following the attack in his first interview about the biggest case of his career, DCI Pye said his team made ‘almost daily’ assessments of whether it was a terror attack.
‘We’ve sat here as an investigation team and talked about it looks like it, sounds like it, the public are going say it is,’ he said.
‘You know, we scratched our head for a long time – why isn’t it?
‘It was it was assessed on almost a daily basis – is this terrorism?’
DCI Pye said that as information came in about the discovery of what was suspected to be the deadly biological toxin ricin in Rudakubana’s bedroom, and the study of an Al Qaeda training manual he had downloaded, he continued to press the point.
‘I’m saying ‘Is this not now terrorism?’ he said.
He revealed that families had pressed police on whether they were ‘hiding’ the truth, asking ‘why would you not want to call it a terrorist act?’
But he stressed that calling it a terror attack would actually have suited the investigation team.
‘All day long, I’d have been happy if someone said it’s terrorist attack,’ DCI Pye said.
Had this happened, police would have had up to two weeks to hold Rudakubana before seeking authorisation to charge him – instead of the standard maximum of 72 hours.
Instead, with the clock ticking, it meant his team of nearly 80 Merseyside Police officers were working around the clock, needing to address issues such as whether the 17-year-old’s mental health was a factor before he could be charged with the three murders and ten attempted murders.
‘So there was absolutely no benefit for us in this never being called terrorism,’ he added.
‘It would have absolutely meant that we had the time to do a lot more things.’
DCI Pye stressed that the investigation was given every available resource and that linking it to terrorism would not have made a difference to that.
Defending the team’s decision, he insisted that the lack of any identified political or religious ideology in Rudakubana’s motivation meant in the eyes of the law it couldn’t amount to terrorism.
‘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, religious [ideology] and we just haven’t got it.’
DCI Pye said Rudakubana’s bombshell guilty pleas on what was meant to be the first day of his trial had come as much of a surprise to him as everyone else in court.
Asked about Rudakubana’s motivation in changing his plea, he said: ‘My view is probably he’s trying to control it, but again, unless he was ever to speak up, we would never know.’
He described the cowardly attack on children which sent shockwaves around the globe as ‘the world’s most evil’ and ‘the good in the world coming together’.
DCI Pye also said that while Rudakubana’s action in deleting his internet browsing history minutes before launching the attack meant officers did not know which sites he had been looking at, he had not been accessing the dark web.
Instead all the material he downloaded about wars, atrocities and genocide were obtained through Google and Bing.