After The Boiling Point

Always Worth Saying, Going Postal
Boiling point.
Van on fire during the 2024 Southport Riots,
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Licence CC BY-SA 3.0

Since G-P covered the issue last year in an article entitled ‘Boiling Point’, new information has come to light regarding the terrorist outrage in Southport after extraordinary events in Liverpool Crown Court this week. Despite refusing to speak in previous hearings, on Monday 20th January, Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana, with the aid of his barrister, pleaded guilty to the terror attack on the Merseyside resort. Taking place on 29th July 2024, three young girls were murdered and a further 10 adults and children were injured at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

The trial proper was due to start the next day, Tuesday 21st, therefore the families of the victims were not in court. The government no doubt hoped the briefest of proceedings would be kept well away from public scrutiny by a planned clash with that day’s presidential inauguration in Washington DC. With no defence entered, a trial expected to last many weeks became legal proceeds lasting less than a day. These included Mr Justice Goose announcing – in another unprecedented move – that his sentencing would be the following Thursday rather than the usual months ahead.

G-P’s previous article concentrated more on the Home Office’s information management campaign and the summer’s resulting violent protests. That campaign continues. By no coincidence, another trial was scheduled to start on the same day as Radakubna was presented to Liverpool Crown Court. That of Anthony Esan, accused of attempting to murder Lt Col Mark Teeton near Brompton Barracks in Gillingham on July 23rd 2024 – six days before the Soutport atrocity. Eason, of African descent, is also charged with possessing a bladed weapon. However, on Christmas Eve — again, certainly not a coincidence — Kentonline announced that the proceedings had been delayed.

Back in North West, the Crown Prosecution Service tried to explain away the lack of information forthcoming to the public since Rudakubana’s arrest. With the accused not speaking at any hearings and not entering a plea, no defence had been served to the judge, resulting in the possibility that all or any evidence would be challenged in court. Therefore, the CPS claimed, no evidence could be published by the media in case the trial was prejudiced. With the trial not taking place, no evidence will be presented in court, allowing much to be buried.

The ruse was only a partial success.

No doubt to the dismay of the government’s news managers the inauguration provided only a partial distraction, with the next day’s headlines being a mixed bag focusing both on events in Washington DC and in Liverpool. Some papers wondered how Axel Radakubana was allowed to remain at liberty despite being reported to the government’s anti-terror Prevent scheme three times and despite a series of other red flags that have remained hidden from the public until now. We shall return to the murderer another time but, neglected by mainstream media, we must focus on his parents – a lower profile story but a salutary tale all the same.

With the legal proceedings having reached the point they have, mainstream media are more able to publish what they know and what they strongly suspect. Ordinarily, journalists are briefed by officials or even have entire articles placed on their desks to be rubber-stamped with their own bylines. A level of certainly appears in the finished pieces as they are attributable to reliable but anonymous sources. However, this time, mainstream articles are peppered with heavy caveats such as ‘thought to’, ‘claimed’ and ‘alleged’. They reference only a small number of unnamed ‘authority figures’, suggesting a cover-up continues even regarding establishment-endorsed London media safe hands.

Among the caveats, more information is now available about the Rudakubana family supplementing what we already suspected through the ‘Boiling Point’ article. Axel Rudakubana’s parents and older brother have now disappeared. Father is 49-year-old Alphonse Rudakubana, mother is Laetitia Muzayire, three years Alphonse’s senior. As stated at the time of the previous G-P article, the Rudakubanas are well connected in their native Rwanda which they left in 2002, just before the birth of their two boys. Axel’s paternal grandfather is thought to have been a Dr Rudakubana, a high-ranking official in the administration of President Juvénal Habyarimana. Dr Rudakubana was one of the founding members of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

The family were from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda but left for Uganda well before the genocide as sectarian tensions rose. In April 1994 genocide broke out in Rwanda following the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana. As events unfolded, Alphonse, then an 18-year-old, is said to have become a relatively senior officer with significant military experience in the Rwandan Patriotic Army in Uganda. The RPA is the military wing of the RPF. Founded in the late 1980s by Rwandan exiles in Uganda, even before the genocide the RPA were fighting as insurgents in eastern Rwanda.

The leader of the RPA was Paul Kagame who became president of Rwanda in 2000 following the Tutsi victory over their Hutu opponents. A darling of the West and the hard man at the top of Rwandan politics, Kagame’s iron grip on the ‘Switzerland of Africa’ leads to sources in the county being tight-lipped. Present at the Coronation, willing to take Mr Sunak’s deported illegal immigrants and allowing access to strategic mineral wealth, albeit plundered from the neighbouring chaotic Democratic Republic of Congo, Kagame is treated with kid gloves by Britain and other Western powers.

Sources have suggested to the press that through his wife, Alphonse is also related to the RPF’s general secretary, Wellars Gasamagera, one of the regime’s most powerful officials. What we know for certain is that the Rudakubanas moved to the UK in 2002 with their two boys being born in Cardiff soon afterwards. Dion was born in 2004 and Axel in August 2006. This would make the family difficult to deport. While specific details about their immigration status are not disclosed, it is common for individuals from regions affected by conflict, such as Rwanda, to seek asylum or resettlement in countries like the UK.

So, why the official silence? Considering Alphonse Rudakubana was a relatively high-ranking officer, well-connected to his country’s leadership, and on the winning side in a Rwanda touted as “the Switzerland of Africa,” why would he move to Wales to drive a taxi? What we do know is that some individuals who settled here during that time are suspected of committing war crimes during the genocide and, for reasons that remain baffling, seem impossible to deport.

Always Worth Saying, Going Postal
Kigali street scene, Switzerland of Africa.
© Always Worth Saying 2025, Going Postal

Three months before the Southport attack, the Independent newspaper ran the headline, ‘Five Rwandan genocide suspects living freely in Britain 30 years after massacre,’ continuing, ‘Exclusive: MPs’ fury as Metropolitan Police fails to conclude investigation it started six years ago and judges refuse to extradite the men who have lived here for two decades.’ Although all those mentioned are Hutus, the Tutsis were far from blameless during the civil war in Rwanda. Following the 1994 genocide, during which an estimated 800,000 Tutsi were slaughtered by the Hutu, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (in which Alphonse was a senior officer with significant military experience) committed numerous war crimes in the aftermath of their victory.

The RPF, led by Paul Kagame, launched a campaign to end the genocide and overthrow the Hutu-dominated regime. However, during and after their advance, they engaged in acts of revenge and indiscriminate killings targeting Hutu civilians. One of the most notable incidents was the Kibeho massacre in 1995, where RPF forces killed thousands of displaced Hutu civilians in a UN-monitored refugee camp established after the previous year’s genocide.

By early 1995, Kibeho housed tens of thousands of Hutu refugees, many of whom were suspected of harbouring individuals who participated in the genocide. The Rwandan government, under the RPF, sought to close such camps to promote resettlement, but tensions escalated when the RPA moved in to dismantle the camp. On April 22, violence erupted as the RPA opened fire on the crowd, claiming it was targeting armed individuals resisting evacuation.

However, international witnesses, including UN peacekeepers, reported indiscriminate shooting into the camp. Estimates of the death toll vary, but the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) documented over 4,000 deaths, while the Rwandan government reported fewer. The massacre highlighted the RPF’s heavy-handed tactics and raised concerns about retaliation against Hutu civilians. Despite international condemnation, no significant accountability measures were taken against those responsible for the killings.

As the RPF pursued Hutus who fled into the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo they carried out large-scale massacres of Hutu refugees, many of whom were women, children, and non-combatants. These actions, documented in the UN Mapping Report (2010), lead to accusations against the RPF of crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Hutu populations in Congo. The RPF also carried out extrajudicial killings and repression within Rwanda, targeting perceived political opponents or suspected collaborators of the genocide. Despite these documented atrocities, few RPF members have faced accountability, leading to criticism of Rwanda’s justice system and international mechanisms.

In the absence of mainstream media comment, a flurry of alternative and social media activity emerged around documents unearthed showing Keir Starmer representing a Rwandan appealing against a Home Office decision when Starmer was an immigration lawyer. Although shown at an early stage that the declared age and ethnicity of the claimant didn’t match the Rudakubanas, the February 2003 case is revealing all the same. The papers show the Refugee Legal Centre and Ben Hoare Bell Solicitors instructing Keir Starmer to advocate on behalf of a number of illegal immigrants.

These included ’M’, a 42-year-old Hutu woman from Rwanda who claimed she had been living in a camp run by Rwandan soldiers since 1994 and said she suffered regular rapes and beatings at the hands of Tutsis. According to her submission, on 3rd January 2003 she managed to escape and went by lorry to Uganda. Her uncle there said it was not safe to remain and arranged for her to go with an agent to the UK, flying from Kampala.

There were two other women with her and the agent. The agent provided the necessary documentation, which she did not see, and he dealt with an immigration officer upon arriving in London before calling her to come through immigration control. She claims to have arrived in the UK on 7 January 2003. However, she did not claim asylum upon arriving at the airport but rather presented to the Home Office at Croydon as if from nowhere at a later date. In court, the Home Office argued there was no evidence that anything M said was true, with a Mr Roberts dismissing her account as impossible.

Three important points arise. One, the porous nature of our borders. Two, Starmer advocating on behalf of non-credible Rwandan illegal immigrants and three, the Home Office processing and documenting arrivals. With the Rudakubanas, we do not know how they got here or why, but the Home Office must have such an account on record. As it stands, this is being kept from the public. The social and alternative media suspicion being that disclosure would be an embarrassment to Starmer both as an immigration lawyer at the time and a subsequent Director of Public Prosecutions and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Furthermore, mystery surrounds the family’s relocation to Southport in 2013 leaving behind a well-established Rwandan community in the Welsh capital. The reason given to neighbours was because of the husband’s job. But that job is as a taxi driver. Why would a well-connected senior officer in a victorious Rwandan army leave the county to go to Cardiff? Then why move to Southport? On what grounds were they allowed to settle here? And what role, if any, did immigration lawyer Sir Keir Starmer play? Why are the Home Office silent?

In the absence of any official comment, Puffins can only hope for a resurgence of old-fashioned journalism from the mainstream media or successful rabbit-holing by alternative and social media that escapes government suppression.
 

© Always Worth Saying 2025