Southport murders: 'More should have been shared'

The Southport murders were followed by rioting in Merseyside which spread across the country

Failure to share basic facts about the Southport killer led to "dangerous fictions" which helped spark rioting, an independent watchdog has said.

Jonathan Hall KC, the UK's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said it would have been "far better" for the authorities to share more accurate detail on the arrest of Axel Rudakubana on 29 July last year.

Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time, walked into the Hart Space dance studio and attacked children at a Taylor Swift themed half-term event.

Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine; Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven and six-year-old Bebe King were killed while nine other children and two adults were injured.

Elsie Dot Stancombe (left), Alice da Silva Aguiar and Bebe King were murdered by Axel Rudakubana

Mr Hall said the "ineffectual near silence" from police, prosecutors and the government after the attacks led to disinformation that sparked widespread rioting in the days after the attack.

Government and law enforcement officials including Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer have said they had to keep information back to avoid prejudicing any potential trial for Rudakubana.

• How red flags over Southport killer were repeatedly missed

• 'Terrorism has changed', says PM on Southport attacks

• 'Evil' Southport killer jailed for minimum 52 years

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.

He suggested the failure to "spell out basic and sober facts" led to "contagious disinformation about a murderous Muslim asylum-seeker that stoked the ensuing riots".

Axel Rudakubana was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 52 years behind bars

He wrote: "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 prosecutors.

Police did disclose that the suspect was a 17-year-old male from Banks in Lancashire, who was born in Cardiff.

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.