A teenager who slashed children at a Taylor Swift dance class has pleaded guilty

LONDON. It was a horrific knife attack that left three little girls dead and others injured at a Taylor Swift dance class in southern England on the first day of the summer holidays last year.

The outrage in Southport, a seaside town, sparked days of unrest as crowds attacked police, mosques and hotels hosting asylum seekers after false claims spread on social media that the attacker was a Muslim migrant who had recently arrived in Britain illegally. a wave of people down the English Channel in small boats.

As it turned out, Axel Rudakubana, now 18, was born in Wales and attended British schools. His family arrived decades ago from Rwanda. The police found an al-Qaeda document on his computer.

Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murdering three people and attempting to kill 10 others in a packed Liverpool courtroom on Monday as his trial was due to begin.

He also pleaded guilty to manufacturing the biological toxin ricin and possessing terrorist literature, including “Military Studies in Jihad Against Tyrants: An Al Qaeda Study Guide.”

The Guardian reported that Rudakubana had been referred three times to Prevent, the government’s program to divert people suspected of radicalization from terrorist violence, since he was an early teenager. The newspaper reported that the teenager was looking for information about mass killings at schools in the United States and terrorist attacks in London.

In court Monday, Rudakubana spoke in a whisper with his face covered by a blue surgical mask. He initially refused to confirm his identity, sitting hunched over, the BBC reports.

After pleading guilty, a judge said he intended to sentence the gunman Thursday to life in prison for the murders of 9-year-old Alyssa da Silva Aguiar, 6-year-old Baby King and 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancomb.

Reporters said the last-minute statement stunned the small courtroom. The families of the slain girls did not appear in court because they assumed the trial would begin in full on Tuesday.

Outside the courthouse, demonstrators held a banner that read: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Far-right anti-immigration activists immediately seized on the July 29 attack on the dance class. Before police released any details about the arrested suspect, social media was abuzz with misinformation. A Pakistani clickbait news aggregator site calling itself Channel 3 Now News said the attacker was an immigrant who had arrived in Britain illegally by boat. Such claims have been amplified by far-right influencers in the UK and abroad.

Videos echoing this claim have been shared by Andrew Tate, a former British-American kickboxer who has built a popular personal brand around hypermasculinity, and Lawrence Fox, an actor turned right-wing activist.

Tommy Robinson, a well-known anti-Muslim campaigner, wrote at the time that there was “justified anger” in Southport as the British authorities “opened our borders” leading to “massacre and the killing of children”.

“You care more about Afghans, Somalis, Eritreans, Syrians, Pakistanis,” he yelled, blushing, in the video. “They are a danger to us.”

By that time violent protests had broken out in the streets. Demonstrators chanting “we want our country back” attacked police, smashed windows in a mosque and looted a store. They set fire to garbage cans, tires and a police van, which burned for hours, filling the sky with black smoke.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the riots as “organized violent robbery” fueled by false reports.

Elon Musk, the owner of Company X and now a top adviser to President Donald Trump, wrote that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain, in response to suggestions that violence was the responsible response to “mass migration and open borders”.

The riots ended after police began charging the participants and after counter-protesters filled the streets, calling for calm.