Chapter 6: Online harms

Chapter 6: Online harms

Introduction

¶1. I have described in Chapter 8: Prevent and Counter Terrorism Policing and Chapter 11: Education, AR’s online activity at school. In short, on 15 November 2019, AR was reported by The Acorns School to have researched school shootings. This was referred to Prevent, along with other issues. However, the Prevent referral was closed. The concerns of The Acorns School in late 2019 about AR’s internet use were also known to Lancashire County Council (LCC), both prior to and, in more detail after, AR’s offending on 11 December 2019.

¶2. The Acorns School obtained AR’s online browsing history for 15 November 2019. Analysis of the browser history shows that AR had searched for ‘degloving injuries’ and had sought to view at least one image of a school shooting and of an injured animal.⁵⁷⁴⁵⁷⁴ LCC001401; ILT000022 – Both disclosed but not published due to sensitive content. This illustrates AR’s interest in violence and gory injuries even at this early stage in the chronology. It also raises the question of what AR was viewing at home, given that this is the sort of material that he was prepared to search for at school during lessons with a level of teacher supervision.

¶3. For reasons I have addressed in Chapters 8 and 11, the detail in the online browsing history was not appreciated at the relevant time. If it had been recognised, then Police Sergeant (PS) Carmen Thompson (Counter Terrorism Case Officer for Prevent) stated that she would have accepted the referral and referred AR to the Channel panel.⁵⁷⁵⁵⁷⁵ T/S: 21/76/25-78/6. This is one example of the difference that a full understanding of AR’s online activity would have made throughout the period before the attack.

¶4. There were other concerns about AR’s online activity that arose before AR carried out the attack on 29 July 2024:

¶a. In addition to the reference to school shootings, on 3 December 2019, AR had been overheard in a class talking to another pupil about videos of people hurting themselves on YouTube.⁵⁷⁶⁵⁷⁶ CTPNW000154/4. This detail was included in the First Prevent Referral;

¶b. On 22 November 2019, AR was seen to be looking at nunchucks (a martial arts weapon) during an IT lesson. Mrs Janet Lewis, designated safeguarding lead (DSL) at The Acorns School, accepted that this ought to have been passed onto Prevent but it was not, although AR did refer to this incident when he met with PS Thompson on 3 January 2020;⁵⁷⁷⁵⁷⁷ CTPNW000135; T/S: 27/61/11-62/18.

¶c. The Acorns School subsequently blocked AR’s access to the internet. When he realised that he had been blocked, AR made attempts to override the security settings to allow internet access on 9 and 10 December 2019. Mrs J Lewis accepted that these actions should also have been passed onto Prevent;⁵⁷⁸⁵⁷⁸ LCC001346/66-67; T/S: 27/62/19-63/9.

¶d. AR posted on Instagram about Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi. A pupil from Range High School who followed AR on Instagram informed Mr David Cregeen (DSL), of this post who, in turn, passed it on to The Acorns School.⁵⁷⁹⁵⁷⁹ T/S: 26/207/3-13, T/S: 27/29/3-30/15. On 1 February 2021, The Acorns School made a Second Prevent Referral which, for the reasons addressed in Chapter 8: Prevent and Counter Terrorism Policing, was closed by PS Thompson;⁵⁸⁰⁵⁸⁰ LCC000455.

¶e. On 21 April 2021, The Acorns School allowed AR access to the internet again for the first time since December 2019. On that first day, AR was seen to have two webpages open with the words “London Bridge”.⁵⁸¹⁵⁸¹ LCC001346/41; T/S: 27/189/3-9. It was recorded that AR had been reading the news about a recent bomb that had been planted on London Bridge, although AR later stated that it did not relate to a bomb and the inquests in relation to the terrorist attack at Fishmongers’ Hall were ongoing at this time.⁵⁸²⁵⁸² LCC001346/41-42. On 22 April 2021, The Acorns School made a Third Prevent Referral in relation to this internet use and AR’s comments at the time.⁵⁸³⁵⁸³ LCC001399. Again, as addressed in Chapter 8: Prevent and Counter Terrorism Policing, this referral was closed by PS Thompson;

¶f. On 4 October 2021, AR’s behaviour at a meeting with Ms Louise Lewis and Ms Sharon Barrett from LCC’s Child and Family Wellbeing Service (CFWS) raised concerns over AR’s online use. He said that he was making his own money via the internet but refused to say how.⁵⁸⁴⁵⁸⁴ LCC002311/42 (the Transcript refers to LCC002302 but LCC002311 is a better version of the same document). He expressed views on political issues that led Ms L Lewis to conclude that there were unaddressed needs for AR in relation to ‘Online Social Media Safety’.⁵⁸⁵⁵⁸⁵ LCC000321/2. Ms Katherine Ashworth, as the corporate witness for LCC in relation to the CFWS, accepted that there was no response to this need in the plan for AR, and that there was “little curiosity around how he was spending his time”;⁵⁸⁶⁵⁸⁶ First Witness Statement of Ms Ashworth LCC001998/§85.

¶g. On 17 March 2022, AR told police officers from Lancashire Constabulary that the reason he had a knife on a bus was that he had intended to stab someone in order that his social media accounts could be accessed and deleted. This was passed to the LCC Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub but, other than the officers passing this information to AR’s parents, no other action was taken in response to this, although it should have led to consideration of AR’s online activity.⁵⁸⁷⁵⁸⁷ LCC000157.

¶5. Another aspect of AR’s online activity was his online purchases. I have addressed these in Chapter 5: Weapons and poisons. By the time of AR’s online purchases of concern (the first being the ricin seeds purchased on 19 January 2022) AR was rarely leaving the house on his own, if at all. It was, therefore, his uncontrolled online access that allowed him to build an arsenal of weapons.

¶6. After the attack on 29 July 2024, the police seized an HP laptop, two Lenovo tablets and a hard drive all of which were seemingly exclusively used by AR. They contained numerous images and articles relating to wars and international conflicts, including in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Korea, Iraq and the Balkans. He had researched material on dynamite and detonators; indeed, three Word documents which he had generated in around June 2021 were on the subject of explosives. The violent content on these devices was extremely varied, among which were pictures of dead bodies, the Twin Towers in New York, the victims of torture and beheadings. Other subjects focused on the enslavement of women, torture, death, weapons and genocide (e.g. clan cleansing in Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda). AR had researched the practice known as Amerindian torture. He had sought material on “operational deaths”, including by the armed forces of the UK (e.g. during the Zulu War and the Mau Mau uprising), under Nazi Germany (mass graves with naked bodies), in Chechnya, and as part of the fight against ISIS in Mosul. He had considered the punishments administered to slave rebels in eighteenth century British plantation societies.⁵⁸⁸⁵⁸⁸ First Witness Statement of DCI Pye MERP007551/§§70-72; T/S: 11/14/3-15/5.

¶7. There were cartoons of killings, violence and rape. There were others which insulted or mocked different religions, notably Islam, Judaism and Christianity (of particular note, there was a significant quantity of anti-Islamic material which included grossly offensive and graphic cartoons). There were materials that were seriously and offensively demeaning to women and girls.

¶8. It is to be stressed that the police searched for and were unable to find any evidence of AR having pursued an ideological cause, whether political, religious or racial. Although he had downloaded an image of the Twin Towers and an academic paper containing the Al-Qaeda training manual, these two items were patently insufficient to support a suggestion that he was motivated by Islamic fundamentalism when balanced against the remainder of the material in his possession.

¶9. In my view it is clear from AR’s online activities that he had a deep and enduring preoccupation with extreme violence and the brutal deaths of others. He took steps to erase his browsing history shortly before the attack, as well as de-activating one of his X accounts on the same day, and consequently we have only a partial view. Nevertheless, the information we have is revealing.

¶10. This preoccupation with extreme violence went beyond mere internet research. It is relevant that he had accessed PDFs entitled ‘Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual’ (downloaded on 30 August and 4 September 2021, in which the entirety of the manual is set out, including guidance on the use of poisons, knives and stabbings), ‘Adolescents’ Peer Friendship and Anxiety and Depression among First Generation BAME Families in the UK’, ‘A Qualitative Study Exploring Adolescents’ Experiences of Peer Relationships in an inpatient CAMHS Setting’ and ‘Manslaughter by Reason of Diminished Responsibility’ (accessed on 17 July 2023 and subsequently deleted). Although the evidence is not necessarily conclusive, there are strong indications that AR had been researching material on the best means of attacking others, as well as the mental health explanations and defences that might be available to him following a criminal prosecution.

¶11. Although there was no digital history revealing a focus on killing and maiming young girls, AR’s longstanding preoccupation with attacking a pupil at his former school, together with his repeated statements that he intended to use a knife to attack others, strongly tends to demonstrate that inflicting extreme violence of this kind was an entrenched fixation. Combined with this online activity, I have described in detail elsewhere the evidence relating to his purchase of weapons, his preparedness to carry weapons, the attack carried out by him on a random former fellow pupil, and his stated desire to attack and kill others.

¶12. In Chapter 4: The attack, I described AR’s computer/tablet use on the morning of 29 July 2024. It is likely that AR viewed a number of files on the morning of the attack, including an excerpt from Kamikaze Death Poetry. In addition, he carried out searches for the “mar mari Emmanuel stabbing” on X. I concluded that, because of X’s weak age verification processes, AR was able to use an adult account on X to search for the video of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel. I further concluded that it is probable that AR did view the actual footage of the stabbing before carrying out the attack.

¶13. I note that AR also provided a false date of birth for his Instagram accounts and was thereby also able easily to open an adult account on that platform.⁵⁸⁹⁵⁸⁹ META000003; META000008. However, there is no evidence that this enabled him to view content such as the Bishop Emmanuel stabbing on that platform. Indeed, the content of AR’s Instagram accounts showed that AR primarily followed young female influencers.⁵⁹⁰⁵⁹⁰ ILT000054 – Disclosed but not published due to sensitive content.

¶14. Finally, the Inquiry has gained some further insight into AR’s use of X because X disclosed the accounts followed by AR and following AR for his extant account. This shows that AR followed a range of accounts: some posting material concerning African politics, history, including colonialism, and conflict; accounts using racialised language; and accounts relating to the Israel/ Palestine conflict.⁵⁹¹⁵⁹¹ ILT000083; ILT000084 – Both disclosed but not published due to sensitive content.