{"id":221395,"date":"2025-01-22T14:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/22\/dont-widen-terrorist-label-says-former-anti-terror-chief-neil-basu\/"},"modified":"2025-01-22T14:00:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:00:13","slug":"dont-widen-terrorist-label-says-former-anti-terror-chief-neil-basu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/22\/dont-widen-terrorist-label-says-former-anti-terror-chief-neil-basu\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t widen terrorist label, says former anti-terror chief Neil Basu"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Don’t<\/div>


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A former head of counter-terrorism has warned of “unintended consequences” if terrorism laws are expanded to include attacks like the one carried out by Southport killer Axel Rudakubana.<\/p>\n

Ex-Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said it would be a mistake to widen the definition of a terrorist, because some violent individuals would “revel” in it.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir Starmer has announced a review of existing laws to address “extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms” following the murder of three young girls at a dance class in Southport last July<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Mr Basu warned this could divert resources and attention from combating existing terrorist threats. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking in Downing Street on Tuesday, the prime minister said the country would have to rethink the way it protected people, because “terrorism has changed” and there was a “new and dangerous threat” from extreme violence. <\/p>\n

The government has announced a public inquiry into the Southport attack. Sir Keir said failings by the state “leap off the page”, and a review would be conducted into “our entire counter-extremist system”.<\/p>\n

Rudakubana had been referred three times to anti-extremism programme Prevent before murdering Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar. <\/p>\n

Mr Basu told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme<\/a> extending the definition of terrorism to encompass people like Rudakubana would be wrong. <\/p>\n

He described the Southport attack as one of the most “horrific” he could remember and said it had been a “hellish week” for the Southport families, but added: “Bad legislation is made in haste in response to shocking incidents. <\/p>\n

“We need to think very carefully about the unintended consequences. My opinion is it would be a mistake.” <\/p>\n

Mr Basu suggested the people the prime minister was pointing to were not terrorists but “violent individuals” who used “any ideology as an excuse for their violent actions”. <\/p>\n

Some of them, he argued, had “psychopathic or sociopathic thoughts” and would love the idea of being designated terrorists. <\/p>\n

Adding to the workload of counter-terror teams would also “come with a very large bill”, he said. <\/p>\n

He said the threats from so-called Islamic State militants and far right extremists were on the rise, so broadening the terrorist definition would also divert attention from tackling organised groups. <\/p>\n

However, Lord [Alex] Carlile, the UK’s first independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, from 2001 to 2011, agreed with Sir Keir<\/a> it was “high time” to review the definition of terrorism in law to include lone attackers without a clear motive. <\/p>\n

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs on Tuesday that several agencies had failed to spot the terrible danger Rudakubana posed.<\/p>\n

The public inquiry would also “consider the wider challenge of rising youth violence and extremism”, she added. <\/p>\n

She told the Commons 162 people were referred to Prevent last year for concerns relating to potential school massacres.<\/p>\n

Mr Basu welcomed the public inquiry, but predicted that its final report would tell a familiar tale.<\/p>\n

It would conclude that counter-extremism agencies did not share sufficient intelligence, and were underfunded, undertrained and “overwhelmed by demand”, he forecast. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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A former head of counter-terrorism has warned of “unintended consequences” if terrorism laws are expanded to include attacks like the one carried out by Southport killer Axel Rudakubana. Ex-Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said it would be a mistake to widen the definition of a terrorist, because some violent individuals would “revel” in it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/23fa\/live\/648a8640-d8a8-11ef-993a-9dfb304c6a75.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[48137,35267,302,553,26085,36408,16534,15674],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221397,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221395\/revisions\/221397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}