Teenager in Southport found with books on self-driving car bombs, genocide, and urban warfare

Reports indicate that Axel Rudakubana had written material concerning self-driving car bombs on his electronic devices discovered after he viciously murdered three children in Southport.

The 18-year-old, who confessed to committing three counts of murder, was found to have a collection of articles and books that implied a fixation on extreme violence.

Among the materials discovered were texts related to the genocide in Rwanda, the history of Nazi Germany, strategies for urban warfare, and other disturbing content detailing torture and cannibalism.

One article detailing the use of car bombs by ISIS explained how they were ‘an incredibly powerful and versatile weapon’ that could ’cause unfathomable destruction in all sorts of environments’.

The piece, written by a weapons expert in a journal about radicalisation, described how the terror group had designed self-driving cars with a 12-mile range with mannequins to hide the fact there was no driver. 

The teenager was also found to have researched ‘electronic detonators’ and ‘strong nitric acid’, The Times reported – citing sources – suggesting he was interested in putting his research to practical use. 

A PDF file that he was found with, entitled ‘Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants, The Al Qaeda Training Manual’ led to him being charge with possessing terrorist materials. 

He also admitted carrying a knife more than 10 times and had a prior conviction for a violent offence against another child at school, despite which he was still able to purchase a blade on Amazon at the age of 17, the BBC reported. 

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said public bodies ‘completely failed to identify the terrible danger that [Rudakubana] posed’, adding that it was a ‘total disgrace’ that he was ‘easily able to order a knife on Amazon’. 

She told the commons today the teenager was ‘obsessed with massacre or extreme violence’ and that ‘action against him was much too weak’.

Yesterday he also pleaded guilty to possessing the highly deadly poison ricin. 

Some of Rudakubana’s research focused on the Rwandan genocide, an event that was said to fascinate him. 

The killer has a connection to the atrocity through his parents, who were both Tutsi and were forced to flee the country following the outbreak of mass killings by the Hutu-dominated regime.

His taxi driver father, Alphonse, is thought to have fought with the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), an armed force that fought the Hutu government and eventually brought an end to the murders.

The 49-year-old is said to have been an officer in the RPA, which invaded from nearby Uganda.

The Rwandan genocide saw an estimated one million people shot, beaten or hacked to death with machetes during just over 100 days of violence that broke out in the east African nation in 1994.

The killings were sparked by the death of Hutu President Juvenal Habyariman, whose plane was shot down on the night of April 6, triggering a rampage by Hutu extremists and the ‘Interahamwe’ militia. 

The Tutsi ethnic group made up only a small proportion (about 14 per cent) of Rwanda’s population at the time but made up the vast majority of the dead – with the killers egged on by propaganda comparing the ethnic minority to cockroaches.

Alphonse is believed to have fled Rwanda with Rudakubana’s mother, Laetitia Muzayire, 52, well before the killings began.

Multiple sources in the country and among the Rwandan expat community told the Mail that the Rudakubanas continued to have close links with ‘high status’ figures linked to the regime.

The family have distanced themselves from Axel Rudakubana’s monstrous crimes, insisting Rwanda’s bloody past played no part in the British-born teenager’s descent into mass murder.

Instead they blamed his exposure to graphic images of brutal killings and atrocities which he was able to access online, coupled with his mental state.

‘Axel has trauma and autism which causes him mental health issue and he did it unconsciously,’ one relative told the Mail on condition of anonymity.

A source added: ‘They think this was caused by exposure to violent materials online.’

In 2017 Rudakubana’s mother Laetitia Muzayire paid tribute to Tutsi victims of the genocide.

In a Facebook post accompanied by an image of a candle she wrote: ‘Our families, our friends, our kids, our people. Forever in our hearts. Tutsi genocide 1994.’

Rudakubana’s paternal grandfather, Dr Rudakubana, is also said to have been an influential figure in Rwanda, with some reports stating that he was a senior official in the government of President Habyariman, while others say he was a founding member of the RPF – the Guardian reports.

Rudakubana has been described as ‘introverted’ as a child and ‘clingy’ with his mother – who previously worked in a clerical role at Cardiff University’s school of dentistry.

Residents of a quiet close in Cardiff said the boy’s parents were ‘nice, quiet people struggling to make a living after coming from Rwanda’.

The couple lived in the Welsh capital for 11 years and had two boys, the elder boisterous, and Axel quiet and shy.

Former neighbours were in shock after discovering Rudakubana had been arrested for murder over the ‘ferocious’ stabbings at a Taylor Swift themed dance class for young girls.

Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, died following the attack at the Taylor Swift-themed class in The Hart Space on a small business park in the seaside town shortly before midday on July 29.

A man living in the Rudakubana family’s two-bedroomed former home said: ‘Obviously something has gone seriously wrong with this young man.

‘It is a shock, such a terrible thing to happen.’

Their former next door neighbour, a 55-year-old civil servant who didn’t want to be named said Axel was ‘very quiet, an introvert’.

‘He was quite clingy to his mum while his older brother was more boisterous and would stick his tongue out at you.

‘I knew the parents were from Rwanda, they spoke English with a strong accent and they cooked spicy food with smells that I didn’t recognise.

‘They were in their late twenties, they had a story about how they came here but I didn’t like to pry.’

Sources have confirmed that Rudakubana was referred three times to the Government’s deradicalisation scheme Prevent.