THE FAMILIES of the Forbury Three have called for more action from the government and warned that lessons haven’t been learned following the sentencing of Southport killer Axel Rudakubana.
James Furlong, Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, and David Wails were murdered in Forbury Gardens in June 2020 by Khairi Saadallah.
Saadallah was set to be deported to Libya following an arrest for being drunk and disorderly, but was charged with damaging property and spitting at a detention officer.
This meant that the Home Office delayed his deportation while the charges were dealt with, and instead requested that the charges were dropped in an email to Thames Valley Police on May 28, 2020.
Prosecutors dropped the charges the following day, but on June 4, just a week later, the Home Office decided that Saadallah could not be deported because of the unsafe conditions in Libya.
He was reported to have suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and was in regular contact with mental health services, and was subject to a preliminary investigation after security services received information about potential terrorist activities.
Despite this, authorities did not seek further action, and he went on to kill three people and injure three more in a knife attack in Forbury Gardens.
In the inquest which followed, Judge Coroner Sir Adrian Fulford ruled that communication between relevant authorities had faced considerable hurdles and that the deaths of the three men were avoidable.
Axel Rudakubana had similarly been referred to the anti-extremism Prevent programme, but went on to commit a stabbing spree at a dance class in Southport.
He killed three girls: Alice da Silva Aguiar, aged nine; Elsie Dot Stancombe, aged seven; and Bebe King, aged six; seriously wounding eight other children and two adults.
Last week, he was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years.
Jan and Gary Furlong, parents of James, met with Home Office minister Dan Jarvis after they received contact from the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper.
The families of the three men killed in Forbury Gardens said in a statement that lessons were still to be learned in the wake of the sentencing of Rudakubana.
In a joint statement, they said: “[Saadallah] was known to the authorities–he had plenty of contact with mental health services.”
They explained, however, that contact was “sporadic and crisis-driven.
“He didn’t meet the criteria for long-term psychological treatment that could have made all the difference.
“As far as we can tell, without serious money and serious investment in mental health services in this country, there will continue to be people at large who are a dangerous risk to the safety of the public as we also saw recently in the Nottingham knife attacks.”
Jan and Gary Furlong are now seeking a meeting with Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to push for more action to stop another person “fall[ing] through the net” of anti-terrorist programmes.
