🚨 SOUTHPORT KI-LLE-R MOVED TO BROADMOOR: Families Furious as Questions Emerge Over His Sudden Transfer From Prison
Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been moved to Broadmoor secure hospital, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.
The 19-year-old was transferred to the hospital from Belmarsh prison earlier this week after it was decided that he could not be managed safely in a prison environment.
The move is expected to provoke fury among the families of the Southport victims, with many likely to question why the killer was deemed fit to stand trial in January 2025.
Responding to the move to Broadmoor, Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the POA union, which represents prison, correctional, and secure psychiatric workers, said his members believe he is ‘playing the system’ so he can move to a more comfortable environment.
He told The Guardian: ‘[Rudakubana] is not mentally unwell. He is playing the system and is nothing more than evil. He should spend his entire sentence in solitary confinement staring at four walls.’
Despite the transfer, the Ministry of Justice insisted the 19-year-old will remain behind locked doors for the rest of his 52-year custodial sentence and is ‘unlikely to ever be released’.
Rudakubana, from Lancashire, was jailed for life in January 2025 and ordered to serve a minimum of 52 years after admitting the murders of Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine.
The teenager also attempted to murder eight other children, dance instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes, who tried to disarm him during the Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on July 29, 2024.
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Axel Rudakubana was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 52 years, at Liverpool Crown Court in January last year
(L-R) Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were all murdered in the atrocity on July 29, 2024
In addition to the murders and attempted murders, he was convicted of producing the biological toxin ricin and possessing an al-Qaida training manual, an offence under the Terrorism Act.
It is also understood that the decision to move Rudakubana to Broadmoor will significantly increase the cost to taxpayers.
A place in a high-security psychiatric hospital costs more than £300,000 a year, compared with around £60,000 annually to keep an inmate in prison.
People held in secure psychiatric hospitals are treated as patients rather than prisoners, although they remain detained under strict security measures.
However, the Ministry of Justice stressed that Broadmoor should not be viewed as a softer option.
A spokesperson said: ‘The families of those murdered and injured in Southport will be in this country’s heart forever and our thoughts remain with them.
‘The offender who carried out these vile crimes will rightly spend the entirety of his 52-year custodial sentence locked up, and is unlikely to ever be released.
‘High secure hospitals are not places of freedom. He will remain under constant supervision in a high-security psychiatric unit, and be returned to prison as soon as possible.
‘The transfer of an offender follows a robust independent clinical assessment.’
The decision comes after Rudakubana attacked a prison officer at HMP Belmarsh in May 2025, triggering an internal investigation.
His supervision was reportedly downgraded just before he used the kettle in his cell to boil water which he then launched over the officer.
Details disclosed after the killings revealed Rudakubana had an extensive history of contact with mental health services.
Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust confirmed he was under its care between 2019 and 2023 before he ‘stopped engaging’.
He had first been referred after taking a knife to school and later admitting he had done so ‘to use it’.
Rudakubana was also referred to the Government’s Prevent counter-extremism programme after researching school massacres on a computer while attending his next school, The Acorns.
Two further referrals followed, although none resulted in intervention because investigators concluded there was no clear ideological motivation behind his fixation with extreme violence.
The inquiry into the Southport murders also heard there had been a ‘wholesale and general failure’ to stop Rudakubana in the lead-up to his attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance club.
Inquiry chair Sir Adrian Fulford cited factors including Axel Rudakubana’s ability to access violent material and buy knives online at a young age, as well as his capacity to leave home unsupervised to commit the massacre.
In his remarks, Sir Adrian said that far from being ‘an unforeseeable catastrophic event’, Rudakubana had a ‘known predilection for knife crime’ and posed a ‘very serious and significant risk of violent harm’.
He was referred to Prevent on three occasions, on December 5, 2019, February 1, 2021, and April 26, 2021, after being spotted researching school shootings, the Libyan military dictator Colonel Gaddafi and the London Bridge terror attack online.
