The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation recommended creating a new offence to address the gap for lone individuals planning mass killings should be considered
The UK’s terror watchdog has warned the internet is driving the emergence of a new kind of mass casualty offence.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, recommended that creating a new offence to address the gap for lone individuals planning mass killings should be considered.
Referencing Axel Rudakubana, who killed three girls at a dance class in Southport, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday: “The internet is really causing problems here. A lot of lone young men, generally, are getting these ideas from the internet that really extreme violence is the solution, and Rudakubana seems to have been one of those people.”
Mr Hall also warned against widening the definition of terrorism – saying it would increase the risk of anti-terror legislation being abused. In a report commissioned after Rudakubana’s sickening murders, Mr Hall said there is a “real and not theoretical gap” for lone individuals who plan mass killings.
He pointed to the case of Nicholas Prosper, 19, who murdered his mother and two siblings and planned a mass shooting at his old primary school. Despite police discovering a loaded shotgun and more than 30 cartridges, there was no specific offence that he could be charged with for planning the school shooting last year.
Mr Hall warned there is a danger that mass killings could start a copycat craze. He was tasked with examining terror legislation by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper “in light of modern threats we face”.
It came after Keir Starmer warned of a new threat from “extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms” following the Southport murders. Rudakubana stabbed Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, to death and tried to kill eight other children and two adults.
His attack was not treated as terrorism because there was no evidence he was motivated by ideology. But Mr Hall cautioned against widening the definition of terrorism, saying it is “already wide”, and expanding it would “increase the possibility of inaccurate use and, in theory, abuse”.
He went on: “It would risk major false positives – the prosecution of people who by no stretch of the imagination are terrorists – and extend terrorism liability into novel terrain.” The move would also result in “unacceptable restrictions on freedom of expression”, he said.