Failure to give basic facts on Southport killer led to ‘dangerous fictions’

The authorities’ failure to disclose basic facts about the Southport killer led to “dangerous fictions” that could have been “far more” prejudicial to his murder trial, a terror watchdog has said.

The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, said it would have been “far better” for authorities to provide an accurate lead rather than an “ineffectual near silence” which led to the disinformation that sparked the riots.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Hall called for an “urgent need” to understand the balance of prejudice in the digital age as contempt of court laws are being reviewed in the wake of the case.

Sir Keir Starmer has defended the decision taken by authorities not to share information about the case earlier on, insisting that to do so would have risked collapsing a potential jury trial.

But Mr Hall wrote: “The failure by the authorities to spell out basic and sober facts about the attacker led to contagious disinformation about a murderous Muslim asylum-seeker that stoked the ensuing riots.

“I would go further than that: it led to dangerous fictions that could have been far more prejudicial to the prosecution of Rudakubana than some of the true facts which were suppressed in the name of contempt of court.

“Had there been a trial, jurors could have entered court with the impression that Rudakubana was a Muslim asylum-seeker and, more toxically, that the authorities were determined to hush it up.”

Earlier this month, Merseyside’s police chief Serena Kennedy told MPs she wanted to dispel disinformation in the immediate aftermath of the Southport murders by releasing information over Rudakubana’s religion, but was told not to by local crown prosecutors.

Mr Hall added that an unintended consequence of the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking has been a “cooling of relations” between the police and mainstream media, but that cases such as Southport show how the information void will be “filled with speculation and mischief”.

“Accurate information is crucial for public trust and confidence, particularly in the wake of terrorist attacks and other horrors,” he wrote.

The watchdog also reflected on the national security landscape where social media, a major source of news, is closely connected to the policies of US tech companies.

“The bracing approach of the new administration is to emphasise, with some justification, the need for freedom of information from government influence or control,” he said.

“This will inevitably clip the wings of the UK’s Online Safety Act.”