London, Jan 23 (EFE).- 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana, who murdered three girls in the northern English town of Southport on Jul. 29, 2024, was sentenced in,a Liverpool court on Thursday to a minimum of 52 years in prison.
Judge Julian Goose handed Rudakubana a life sentence, but because he was a minor at the time of the crime and British law does not allow life imprisonment in cases such as Rudakubana’s, a minimum of 51 years and 190 days was set, discounting the time he has already served behind bars since his arrest.
“The harm Rudakubana has caused to each family, each child and to the community has been profound and permanent,” the judge told Liverpool Crown Court in northwest England.
Goose added at the reading of the verdict that Axel Rudakubana would spend most of the rest of his life in prison.
“I consider it likely he will never be released,” noting that if he had been 18 years old, he would have sentenced him to life imprisonment with no minimum term.
Rudakubana, who showed no remorse after killing the minors, had pleaded guilty on Monday to stabbing to death Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, and attempting to murder eight other minors and two adults during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.
Rudakabana was convicted on 16 counts, including the production of ricin, a biological toxin, and possessing an al-Qaeda training manual.
Shortly after the infanticide sentence was announced, the Crown Prosecution Service said it was considering an appeal to the Court if it concluded that the sentence was too lenient.
During the incident, Rudakubana inflicted over a hundred stab wounds on the youngest of the victims, aged 6, according to the pathologist who examined her body.
Rudakubana’s case highlighted failings in the UK’s counter-terrorism prevention system after it emerged this week that the accused had been referred to Prevent, a government youth program on three occasions from the age of 14.
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Keir Starmer stated that “what happened in Southport is a devastating moment in our history, no words come anywhere close to expressing the brutality and horror in this case.”
“We will honor those three little girls and deliver not just justice but the change that the people and the families of Southport deserve,” he added.
In the aftermath of the attack, far-right groups responded with acts of vandalism in several British cities after it was falsely reported on social media that the boy was an asylum seeker, when in fact he was born in Wales to Rwandan parents. EFE
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