The 18-year-old suspect in the fatal knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England pleaded not guilty to the 16 charges against him, including three counts of murder, the BBC reports.
Axel Rudakubana appeared in a Liverpool court Wednesday, Dec. 18, via video but refused to speak when asked to confirm his name and enter a plea. The judge entered the not guilty plea on Rudakubana’s behalf.
Rudakubana was charged with murdering three young girls, Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9. He was also charged with 10 counts of attempted murder, including eight children. In October, prosecutors added two additional charges for producing the toxic chemical ricin and possessing an Al Qaeda training manual.
Rudakubana’s trial is set to begin Jan. 20, 2025 and it’s expected to last up to six weeks.
The fatal attack took place July 30 in Southport, England, a town north of Liverpool. Swift responded to the tragedy at the time, writing on Instagram: “The horror of yesterday’s attack in Southport is washing over me continuously and I’m just completely in shock. The loss of life and innocence and the horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there, the families, and first responders. These were just little kids at a dance class. I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.” (The musician also met with two survivors of the attack backstage at one of her concerts in London in August.)
The attack also led to some of the worst far-right rioting in England in decades, driven largely by misinformation that spread online. When Rudakubana was first arrested and charged, his identity was kept anonymous because he was 17 at the time. But an array of far-right provocateurs, from Andrew Tate to Tommy Robinson (the latter the founder of the now-defunct English Defence League), started blaming undocumented immigrants or linking the attacks to Islam.
In Southport, a mob threw rocks at a local mosque and eventually torched a police van. Riots soon spread to other towns as the mobs broke windows and tried to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers. In an effort to stem the violence, the judge lifted the restrictions on Rudakubana’s identity. Even though it turned out he was a British citizen, born to parents from Rwanda, from a Christian background, the rioting continued.
The U.K. parliament is expected to hold an inquiry into the rioting early next year. Elon Musk was one of several people summoned to testify, along with senior executives from Meta and TikTok. Part of the inquiry will reportedly focus on the rise of false and harmful AI content, as well as the spread of misinformation on social media.
