X’s approach to the video of the Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel stabbing

X’s approach to the video of the Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel stabbing

¶39. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel is an Australian cleric who live streams his services on YouTube. On 15 April 2024, Bishop Emmanuel was delivering a sermon when he was stabbed on multiple occasions and seriously injured by an assailant who, at the relevant time, was a teenager. After the attack, screams can be heard from the congregation who ran towards the attacker and Bishop Emmanuel. The attack was captured by the live footage. Ms Khananisho accepted, and I agree, that the footage is horrific and very violent.⁶²⁴⁶²⁴ T/S: 32/104/9-24.,⁶²⁵⁶²⁵ T/S: 32/107/13-15. It is manifestly unsuitable for viewing by children.

¶40. The criminal trial of the assailant has not yet begun but he faces charges of committing a terrorist act. Fresh charges were laid in September 2025 alleging that the assailant accessed and shared violent extremist material. It is entirely plausible that the assailant carried out the attack in the knowledge that it would be live streamed, that the footage of the attack would be shared online and that the assailant wished for that to occur in order to advance his extremist cause.

¶41. Initially, the footage was shared across many websites worldwide including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and X. X has continued to host the video, albeit it is deemed sensitive content and therefore would not have been available to children in 2024, provided they had honestly self-declared their real age. X deemed the footage to comply with the various relevant policies it had in place, for example its Violent Content Policy.⁶²⁶⁶²⁶ XIUC000013. Ms Khananisho stated that she was not at X at the time and could not comment on whether X found this a difficult decision to make but she did at least accept that the footage could be seen as very close to the thresholds set out in X’s policies.⁶²⁷⁶²⁷ T/S: 32/111/1-112/5. The video is no longer available on YouTube, although that appears to be because the poster removed it, rather than because it was removed by YouTube for breaching its Policies. The video was also subject to age restriction on YouTube (see further below).

¶42. On 16 April 2024, the Australian e-Safety Commissioner issued a takedown notice to X to remove the video content depicting the attack. In response, X promptly made posts inaccessible to users in Australia but stated that it intended to file a legal challenge. The commissioner then applied to the Federal Court of Australia seeking the permanent removal and/or restriction of the content for all users of X globally. The commissioner obtained an interim injunction. However, on 13 May 2024, the Federal Court dissolved the injunction, noting that: it could not determine the position for global users, the footage could be viewed on other platforms online and Bishop Emmanuel was not himself opposed to the footage remaining on social media. The court did also acknowledge that removing the posts from the platform altogether would be a reasonable step for X to take, in the sense that a decision to take that step could readily be justified. Nevertheless, X decided to continue hosting the footage, the commissioner discontinued the litigation and also agreed to set aside the removal notice. This occurred around a month and a half before the attack by AR.

¶43. I have set out X’s age verification measures in 2024 above. Ms Khananisho stated that they were satisfactory at the time and noted that X is not targeted at children and has less than 1% user base under the age of 18 (the latter statistic presumably relies on X’s user age data being accurate). In that context, X did not consider it proportionate to put in place further checks, noting the privacy concerns that could arise when requiring identification. It is of note that AR was also able to give a false date of birth for his Instagram accounts.

¶44. Nevertheless, I am conscious of the context. X had fought litigation in order to continue hosting the footage of the Bishop Emmanuel stabbing. Ms Khananisho agreed that X had, over recent years, erred on the side of freedom of speech and the sharing of more material.⁶²⁸⁶²⁸ T/S: 32/84/24-85/4. She also commented that removing the footage “under the guise of safety, that isn’t justice; that is tyrannical overreach”.⁶²⁹⁶²⁹ T/S: 32/118/25-119/2.

¶45. Ms Khananisho stated that “X is committed to ensuring that its young users are protected from age inappropriate and sensitive content online and that violent and terrorist content is removed or otherwise treated appropriately”.⁶³⁰⁶³⁰ Witness Statement of Ms Khananisho XIUC000030/§41. If that was the case, then, given the context, it was incumbent on X to ensure that it protected children from violent content with appropriate age verification. In my view, the age verification measures that X had in place in 2024, which were simply a requirement for the user to state their age, were inadequate and failed to meet X’s purported commitment to young users.

¶46. On 24 January 2025, the day after AR’s conviction and shortly after the announcement of this Inquiry, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for DSIT wrote a joint letter (‘the joint letter’) asking platforms to remove the Al-Qaeda Training Manual and the Bishop Emmanuel stabbing footage.⁶³¹⁶³¹ HOM000092/2. The joint letter noted, in relation to the Bishop Emmanuel stabbing footage:

¶“it is still available to view in the UK. We are therefore urgently asking you to ensure this is removed from your platforms to ensure that it is not used to inspire other attacks. This trial has laid bare the potential consequences of failing to act on such content. We would now urge you to urgently review again the specific content accessed by [AR] and, the options available to you to remove all instances of this specific material, found to be materially relevant to this tragic case, present on your services.”

¶47. It is clear from the joint letter that the Bishop Emmanuel stabbing footage was not deemed to be illegal and footage depicting a crime is not, in and of itself, illegal. Nevertheless, it is clear that the footage was deemed legal but harmful and I agree with that assessment.

¶48. TikTok and Meta replied to the joint letter expressing their condolences and stating that the video had been removed from their services.⁶³²⁶³² HOM000194; HOM000193 respectively. The Home Office also wrote to Google: HOM000195. While one of the subsidiary companies associated with Google is the provider of the YouTube service in the UK (Google LLC), the response set out the approach of the Google search engine to the issues raised, rather than the approach of YouTube. It therefore appears that the joint letter was addressed to Google rather than to YouTube. In any event, it does not appear that YouTube took a conscious decision to continue to host the video of the attack having been put on notice that it was viewed by AR minutes before he carried out the attack. The statement of Alexander Rawle of Google LLC noted that the video was no longer available by the time he drafted his statement and he had not viewed it before it was deleted. Moreover, YouTube introduced automated systems to assess user’s ages (in addition to asking users to input their date of birth) in 2020.Show full note X responded to state that it is “committed to being fair, informative, responsive, and accountable ensuring that our measures are targeted and proportionate” and that X takes its “responsibility to combat terrorism and violent extremism very seriously”. However, the letter stated that the:

¶“content reported has not been found to be in violation of the X Terms of Service. The media has however been marked with a sensitive content warning in response to UK law enforcement requests …

¶X has clear policies … We also recognise that sometimes it may be in the public interest to allow people to view posts where this directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern. We uphold it is in the public’s interest to view this footage should they wish to do so. Additionally, the Bishop himself has expressed that the public should be allowed to see the footage.”⁶³³⁶³³ HOM000196/3.

¶49. Ms Khananisho mounted a strong defence for the continued hosting of the footage, noting that she is a devout parishioner of the church of Bishop Emmanuel and stating that she viewed that footage as showing a miracle.⁶³⁴⁶³⁴ T/S: 32/117/5-118/24. This view, and the range of approaches to the balance between free speech and online protections, might be understood before the attack took place (if appropriate age verification measures had been in place). However, I note that X failed to address the fact of the attack in any way in its response to the joint letter and failed to express any condolences to the victims. Ms Khananisho was not part of X’s decision making after receiving the joint letter and was unable to comment on it.⁶³⁵⁶³⁵ T/S: 32/141/10-21. In my view, it is deeply regrettable that X has continued to host the full video, despite the evidence that it was searched for, and probably viewed, by AR before he went on to carry out such a heinous attack. Moreover, I do not consider that Ms Khananisho gave a satisfactory response, by quoting Benjamin Franklin, to the question of whether X could have continued to allow footage of the lead up and aftermath of the attack but without permitting the graphic imagery of the terrorist stabbing itself.⁶³⁶⁶³⁶ “Those that give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”.,⁶³⁷⁶³⁷ T/S: 32/119/3-19. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not a suggestion that X could edit posts which include the full video but, instead, that it could prohibit such posts, while permitting posts of the footage showing the lead up and aftermath of the attack, for example in news reports of the attack. In my view, that step was, at the very least, an appropriate response to the attack.

¶50. X’s response, throughout, has remained that its action was lawful, in line with the principles of freedom of expression and that the attack on the Bishop was a newsworthy event. X goes so far as to argue that suggesting that a platform should remove such a video after a request from government would be a dangerous, unworkable precedent that conflicts with the OSA and even with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights: freedom of expression. I make clear that I do not suggest that X has acted unlawfully in this regard. UK law currently permits it to act in this way. The criticism is that it is deeply regrettable that they have refused outright to exercise their discretion to prohibit posts which include the most graphic part of the material, namely the immediate act of the stabbing of the Bishop. X maintained this position once they knew that the material had been searched for by AR minutes before he left to murder Elsie, Alice and Bebe. For most people, this would have caused – at the very least – a significant concern that the footage may have fortified AR’s motivation to go ahead and carry out his murderous attack. In light of that concern, a prohibition of posts of the most graphic part of the video would have been consistent with X’s statement that it takes its “responsibility to combat terrorism and violent extremism very seriously”, notwithstanding the importance of freedom of expression.⁶³⁸⁶³⁸ HOM000196.

¶51. Ms Connolly agreed that X’s response was disappointing from DSIT’s perspective and that, given the regulation in place at the time, DSIT could not do anything further to have the video removed.⁶³⁹⁶³⁹ T/S: 31/212/19-213/2. Ms Ellsmore of the Home Office stated that the outcome was not a satisfactory state of affairs.⁶⁴⁰⁶⁴⁰ T/S: 22/91/14-92/6. However, the OSA does not give Ofcom the power to require legal but harmful content to be removed from platforms nor to adjudicate on complaints in relation to particular pieces of footage. Instead, Ofcom assesses whether the platform has taken the correct approach and has appropriate systems in place, in line with the Codes of Practice.

X’s co-operation with the Inquiry

¶52. In Chapter 4: The attack, I observed that, regrettably, X did not show the same ready willingness to co-operate with the Inquiry as almost all other organisations and Core Participants. X took an inappropriately narrow view of the Inquiry’s first Section 21 notice and did not disclose any content data (e.g. posts, likes etc.) in contrast to the approach taken by Meta.

¶53. While there was a level of co-operation with the Section 21 notices by X, and considerably more co-operation from Meta on behalf of Instagram, it is crucial that inquiries are able to access information about the social media use of perpetrators. This case demonstrates that information about online activity can be revealing.

¶54. There is a power for Senior Coroners to notify Ofcom in order to obtain information about social media use (section 101 of the Online Safety Act 2023), but this only applies to the child whose death is being investigated. It does not apply where the inquest is investigating the death of a victim and wishes to obtain information about the social media use of the perpetrator. Moreover, the power applies to coroners only, not to public inquiries investigating a death.