FBI to help police with Southport killer inquiry

The attack took place at a dance class at the start of the summer holidays in July

The FBI are providing support as British police try to recover deleted searches from the Southport killer's online accounts.

Axel Rudakubana cleared his internet history just before he travelled to the dance class where he stabbed three girls to death and injured many more in the Merseyside town on 29 July last year.

Senior investigating officer Det Ch Insp Jason Pye said in January that the process to retrieve his online history "could be years" because the crime had not been categorised as terrorism, as officers did not find evidence that Rudakubana had been motivated by any specific ideology.

If it had been, he said, the process could have been easier.

Investigators found no signs of any allegiance to a single cause, which is why - despite Rudakubana pleading guilty to downloading a terror manual - his case has never been treated as a terrorism investigation.

They have had to apply to access Rudakubana' search history on Google and Microsoft, which are based in the US, via a specialist prosecutor in the country.

Axel Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January

In a new joint statement, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Merseyside Police confirmed the FBI were now involved as the inquiry continues.

It said: "A specialist liaison CPS prosecutor in the United States has been working with international partners to obtain material which may be relevant.

"We are thankful to the US Department of Justice and the FBI for their ongoing assistance and the importance which they have placed upon our request."

Merseyside Police have previously said that Rudakubana's view of violent footage of the attempted murder of a bishop in Australia - made minutes before he left home on the day of the attack - was the only thing that remained from his online history after he deleted his searches.

Officers have contacted Google, which owns browser Chrome, and Microsoft, which owns search engine Bing, to uncover what Rudakubana had been searching in the months before the attack.

Elsie Dot Stancombe (aged seven), Alice Dasilva Aguiar (nine) and Bebe King (six) were killed in the attack

Detectives also discovered more than 164,000 documents had been downloaded from the internet and stored on Rudakubana's devices.

Jailing the 18-year-old for a minimum of 52 years in January, Mr Justice Goose said the material showed he had "a longstanding preoccupation with violent killing and genocide".

At the time, Det Ch Insp Pye said an ongoing process in the US courts to retrieve Rudakubana's online searches "could be years".

"Our case has always been - based on the evidence - it's not counter-terrorism. There is nothing in terms of ideology," he said.

"So I couldn't go down that path to try and get that information any quicker.

"There is a process of getting it quicker, but because it's in the serious organised crime, major crime category, unfortunately I can't get it as quick as we would like."