UK PM Starmer vows crackdown on ‘marauding mobs’ as Southport teen perpetrator faces court

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - A protestor holds a banner reading ‘We Will Not Be Silenced’ during the ‘Enough is Enough’ demonstration on Whitehall, outside the entrance to 10 Downing Street in central London July 31, 2024. — AFP pic

LONDON, Aug 2 — A teenager appeared in court yesterday charged with murdering three girls in a stabbing attack, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a new “national capability” to tackle disorder that broke out after the incident.

The new measures will allow the sharing of intelligence, wider deployment of facial recognition technology and criminal behaviour orders to restrict troublemakers from travelling, said the prime minister.

“These thugs are mobile, they move from community to community. We must have a policing response that can do the same,” he added.

Starmer earlier met with police chiefs from across the country to discuss how to quell the violence that erupted in the nights following Monday’s killings.

The protests, blamed on far-right agitators, spread from the seaside town where the stabbings happened to other English cities.

At the emergency meeting of police chiefs at his Downing Street office Starmer denounced the violence and praised the police and other emergency services for the way they had handled it.

The meeting came shortly after 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana made his first court appearance to face murder and attempted murder charges over the knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in Southport, northwest England.

The mass stabbing has shocked the country.

But false information online about the suspect led suspected members of an Islamophobic organisation to attack a mosque and clash with police in Southport on Tuesday night.

Protests then rocked central London, and the northern cities of Hartlepool and Manchester late Wednesday. Police arrested more than 100 people outside Downing Street.

‘Marauding mobs’

“Shockingly, what we’ve also seen is marauding mobs on the streets of Southport, attacking the very same police officers who responded to the awful attack on those girls,” Starmer told police leaders.

“This government supports the police. It supports what you are doing. And to be absolutely clear, this is not protest, this is violent disorder, and action needs to be taken,” he added.

Further north, in Liverpool Crown Court, Rudakubana faced three counts of murder and 10 of attempted murder. The youth is accused of murdering Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine.

He is also accused of having wounded another eight children and two adults during the attack.

Rudakubana wore a grey tracksuit sweatshirt and at times rocked back and forth and side to side, as a judge lifted normal court reporting restrictions for a minor, ruling that he could be named.

While the suspect would normally have had anonymity because of his age, he would in any case have lost it when he turned 18 next Wednesday.

“Continuing to prevent the full reporting has the disadvantage of allowing others to spread misinformation, in a vacuum,” said judge Andrew Menary.

Starmer warns online media

False social media reports about him contributed to the violent clashes in Southport, in which bricks were thrown at a mosque and dozens of police officers were hurt.

Starmer also warned social media companies yesterday that they had to uphold the law over disinformation.

“It’s also a crime and it’s happening on your premises,” Starmer said of the proliferation of disinformation “whipped up online”, which helped spark the violence.

Online posts included false claims that the attacker was an “illegal migrant”.

Police have blamed members of the far-right English Defence League grouping, an anti-Islam organisation founded 15 years ago whose supporters have been linked to football hooliganism.

Outside Downing Street late Wednesday, protesters threw bottles at police shouting “Stop the boats” — the latter a reference to small boats bringing irregular migrants across the Channel.

‘Full force of the law’

In Hartlepool, northeast England, demonstrators set fire to police cars and threw objects at officers. Police said they had made eight arrests.

Hartlepool police said officers faced “missiles, glass bottles and eggs being thrown at them, with several suffering minor injuries”.

In his comments, Starmer made it clear that while the right to protest must be protected, “criminals who exploit that right in order to sow hatred and carry out violent acts will face the full force of the law.”

He told the assembled police chiefs: “The government will make sure you’ve got the powers you need, and we will back you in using those powers, and I think it’s very important that we say that.”

The Labour government, in power less than a month following a landslide general election win over the Conservatives, has vowed to clamp down on crime and antisocial behaviour. — AFP