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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello, we're recording this episode of Newscast just after Donald Trump implemented his so-called blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which was a product of the failed negotiations in Islamabad over the weekend. So we will get the latest on that. But we're going to begin with the first report from the inquiry into the Southport attacks from 2024.
So that is a flavour of what you'll hear on this episode of Newscast. Take me down to Downing Street.
Let's go have a tour.
Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio, and I should just warn you that the first half of this episode may contain details that you find distressing, because we're going to be discussing the first report of the official inquiry into the Southport attacks, which happened in 2024, which was released today. Now, we all remember what happened that day.
That was when the teenager Axel Rudi Cabana stormed into a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport and killed three young girls, Alistair Silva Aguilar, Elsie Dot Stankham and B.B. King. He also wounded many, many others.
Now this inquiry was led by the judge Sir Adrian Fulford and he found that these murders and this attack could have been prevented if the killer's parents and several official authorities had acted in the years leading up to the attack in 2024. This is a big big report with some big consequences and it's very difficult reading especially for the families of those involved.
Now, we're joined here in the newscast studio by two people who know this story incredibly well because they've been covering it for years. Special correspondent Judith Moritz. Hello, Judith. Hi, Adam. And Daniel Sanford, our correspondent, is here as well. Hello, Daniel. Hi, Adam. Should we just do a bit of backstory here?
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Chapter 2: What led to the inquiry into the Southport attacks?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's very striking that the decision was made to refer to him as AR. There was no kind of legal requirement on the inquiry and they've not put any legal requirements on us. We'll go on talking about him as Axel Rudiger Barna, but the decision was taken to essentially anonymise him. him in that way so that he could be spoke about as AR during the inquiry.
And also, by the way, his parents were not referred to by their surname either, and his brother wasn't referred to by his surname. And yes, there's an increasing desire by these inquiries and inquests and court cases to make sure that the people most harmed by these events aren't forgotten in the process.
So whereas back in the 1990s an official inquiry report might not have gone into great detail about the effect the attack had had on those who'd survived, and of course on the awful, awful effect on the families of those who died, that is now much more part of the process. And there's essentially a separate chapter dedicated to that part of this really, really awful story.
That's a very powerful bit of the report to read. Let's delve into then some of the findings then. And Judith, the first one is this whole sort of alphabet soup of organisations who were involved in this case, but didn't quite ever do enough to prevent the attack happening.
Yeah, I think that the headline here, if you want, and bearing in mind, you know, we're talking 800 pages, lots of chapters, lots of detail. But the inquiry chair, when he delivered the report, when he made his statement, he said, well, there's one headline finding.
It's what he's calling the absence of risk ownership, which is essentially saying all of these different authorities and agencies are It's not the case that they didn't know there were problems with Rudacabana. They were all talking about it. They were even talking to each other, but they were all, frankly, passing the buck.
What we're seeing here, laid bare today, is the way in which nobody owned the particular risk. No one took command or leadership. There was a lot of evidence that individuals would, and we're talking both agencies and individuals working for them.
So, you know, across the public sector, particularly social services, health service, schools, they're criticised in different ways and to different extents. And there has been some very good behaviour also identified, I should say.
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Chapter 3: How did the Southport attack unfold on that tragic day?
They asked him why he was carrying a knife. He says, I want to use it. And he also said, by the way, I'm also thinking about poisoning people. And they were very concerned about him and his state of health. But they didn't arrest him and they didn't go and search his house and his computers.
If they had, they would have found the beginnings of this armory of weapons that he was building up in the home. They would have found the precursors to ricin that he'd purchased. And they would have found some very troubling things in his internet search history.
But because that was dealt with as being a vulnerable child rather than a child who might be a risk to others, even though he was carrying a knife on a bus and said he was thinking of using it, then that was never dealt with.
The judge is pretty clear that he thinks that is the moment, one of many, but a really key moment where he could have been stopped, he could have ended up in custody or in some quite serious criminal justice situation and he might not have been able to carry out the attack.
And Judith, I mean, us three, we read a lot of reports of this ilk over the last few decades. Maybe not into an incident as sort of chilling as this one. But it seemed quite unusual for me for so much of it to be about the parents and for the judge to be so explicit about their failings as a mum and a dad.
Yeah, I think that's true. And I remember being at the inquiry when they gave evidence, which was not something we were expecting until pretty much the last minute, actually. His brother was legally represented at the inquiry, but... but they weren't. And they were the last witnesses to give evidence. And it was extraordinary.
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Chapter 4: What were the main findings of the inquiry report?
It was extraordinary to listen to. I mean, some of what they said, you know, his father saying the love that he had for his son overrode his good judgment, that he had no authority as a father, that he felt he had no power at all to stop him accessing this horrific material online. And, you know,
You may remember the photographs of that house that the police released, which the sitting room was chaotic and weaponry all over the place that the parents hadn't sounded the alarm. Now, I'm saying I found that extraordinary. But bear in mind that also listening to that evidence at the inquiry were the parents of the children who were who were murdered and who died.
were injured and the adult survivors. And for them to hear that, I mean, that really was very unusual. They said afterwards, they made public statements and talked about the fact that they felt those parents should be held to account. And that clearly is what's happened today. Although the chair has also been at pains to point out that they're not
Operating in isolation and arguably, you know, the agencies who've come in for criticism are also being criticised for not looking at the family unit as a unit, as a whole, not just looking at a troubled teenager, but thinking to themselves, well, what's going on in the family home here and what's the bigger picture?
And Daniel, there was a little bit of the report I didn't quite understand and what it was actually calling for. And it's about this idea of what access children and teenagers have to the internet. Is it calling for a new law that clamps down on... young people's access to the internet? I wasn't quite sure what was going on there.
Yes, I mean, one of the issues is that Axel Rudder-Campana's searches at school were a little bit known about, and one of the things that had led to him for the first time being referred to the counter-extremism programme that's called PREVENT. But nobody knew what he was searching for at home, and because of the missed opportunities, nobody...
search for what he was looking for at home, and his parents didn't have any parental controls on his use of the internet at home. So it was a complete free-for-all in terms of his use of the internet at home, not only what he was searching for, but also the ordering of machetes and knives and the castor beans that can be used to make rise in.
And what the judge is saying is that he thinks that maybe in certain circumstances where there's been some criminal justice or extremism intervention, maybe there should be like a legal block on what a kid can access at home.
So it goes beyond what the parents think is appropriate and what they should put in place on the devices and on the broadband router, but actually whether there should be a legal block. Again, another thing that he wants to look at. Just
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Chapter 5: How did the inquiry address the role of the perpetrator's parents?
And I think he felt that it was being used as an explanation for his behaviour rather than people looking beyond that as to what risk he can pose.
Judith, you've got to know a lot of the families who've been affected by this in Southport. What sort of things are they saying about this inquiry and about the report today?
I think on one level, it doesn't tell them anything they didn't already know in the sense that, particularly while they've been watching the evidence with mounting horror over the last few months, that this was an attack they knew with a sinking heart could have been prevented. But what they said to...
The inquiry and what some of them have said to me was that they were very, although they found it very difficult, particularly those days when they came themselves to give evidence, which was very traumatising. They were very supportive of the whole exercise, but only if it is for the purpose of effecting change. So the way they will look at today is it's a step on a journey.
They won't gauge the success of the inquiry on today's report. They'll gauge its success down the line. whether or not the recommendations that are being suggested are given time to happen. And now some of them we'll see detail of in the next phase of the inquiry, but most of them are not connected to that next phase. And I'm not entirely certain what the mechanism will be
for policing whether or not all these agencies are being told that they need to make improvements whether that's going to happen because frankly we have sat here before you and i we've talked about the manchester arena inquiry and other public inquiries where you know recommendations are made and then you wait and you see is there going to be change that's really the key
Although, Daniel, just before we started recording this bit of this episode, Keir Starmer was in the comments and he was doing a statement about the Middle East and the Gulf, but he inserted a bit about his response to this and he said that he was determined that the lessons would be learned. So I suppose there is a kind of bit of a political yardstick there now.
And of course, there is phase two of this inquiry. Yeah, exactly.
I think there's two more steps to this journey. There's phase two. Now that he's identified those issues that he wants to go into more depth, the systemic issues, as it were, what will Sir Adrian Fulford conclude at the end of that? And then the next stage, the critical ones for the family, as Judith says, is will those recommendations come into force quickly and will they be effective?
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Chapter 6: What systemic failures contributed to the Southport attack?
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Well, since the last episode of Newscast was recorded, Donald Trump said that in reaction to the failed negotiations in Islamabad over the weekend with Iran, the US would introduce its own blockade of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. So that was the threat. It's since been implemented, which means we've learned a little bit more about what it actually means in practice.
And the person who's been monitoring it is my podcasting cousin from AmeriCast, Anthony Zerker, who joins us from the US now. Hello, Anthony. Anthony. Hey, it's great to be back. Is your flight booked for a cast fest on the 25th of April?
My flight is booked. My hotel's ready. I am looking forward to being on the same stage with you. It's very exciting.
Great. We will be doing a lot of podcasting that weekend, so it'll be really good fun. Right. In terms of events following this weekend and the negotiations in Islamabad between the US and Iran, one of the outcomes of that was Donald Trump saying that he was going to stage his own blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Now, that was due to be kicking in at 3 p.m. UK time on Monday.
We're now recording just after six on Monday. Do we know if this blockade is in place and what it actually entails?
Yeah.
The Central Command, which is the U.S. military command in charge of the Middle East, says that the blockade is, in fact, in effect. It's a little different than the way Donald Trump described it in that Truth Social post on Sunday. It's not a blockade of everything going through the Strait of Hormuz and stopping any tankers that paid some sort of a toll to the Iranians.
It's a blockade on ships that are heading to or from Iran, and they're intercepting them after they pass through and out of the Strait of Hormuz. So it's a little easier, I suppose, for the United States Navy to track.
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Chapter 7: How did the inquiry highlight the impact on survivors?
So, People were saying, well, why are we letting a country that we are currently fighting financially benefit from their exports when we have this awesome military that we could turn it off and cut it out anytime we wanted? So I think what we see now is the decision by the Trump administration to use that tool
to pressure Iran to hit them where it hurts, essentially, to keep them from getting these funds to tighten the economic vice in order to push them to make more concessions.
Because I think the big thing that, at least according to this administration, coming out of those talks was that Iran was not willing to totally abandon their nuclear program, to give up the enriched uranium, to stop enriching more uranium. And this could be seen as a way to
It's also a reminder that, okay, the US military action against Iran was huge, but it wasn't the absolute maximalist approach they could have taken. They could have been doing this from the very beginning if they'd wanted to be complete.
Right, right. Right. And I think it reflects the fact that Trump is very sensitive and has become even more sensitive to what's happening on the domestic front with the price of gasoline here at the pumps over four dollars a gallon. Now it was heading up. He he understands that that is that is a point where Americans feel threatened.
the economic hardship of this war very quickly and very visibly. You drive around anywhere in an American city and you see the displays at gas stations of the price of a gallon of gas, and it becomes very clear how much more this is costing you. And so he had to acknowledge and try to fight this war without leading to an economic crisis from increased energy prices.
He hasn't been able to resolve the war despite doing that, although now he seems to be willing to bear perhaps a little more disruption by doing this to Iran. And it's going to be a test of will. Can Iran endure this economic hardship and possibly more bombing?
Or are they going to give in before Donald Trump succumbs to the pressure of politics here in the United States and the economic hardship and global unrest that could come from higher energy prices?
Anthony, you mentioned the higher gas prices at the petrol stations. How much higher than normal are those numbers?
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