MI5 knew teenage terror suspect was vulnerable but pushed ahead with inquiry
MI5 pushed ahead with a terrorist inquiry into a teenager later found dead in a suspected suicide, despite knowing she was vulnerable, an inquest has heard.
Officers raised concerns about the risk of Rhianan Rudd harming herself after the security services opened an investigation into her obsession with committing a far-Right terrorist attack.
But they were told that 'no exception' could be made in investigating her activities because of the threat she posed to national security.
Intelligence chiefs concluded the case had to be pursued, as deradicalisation work with Rhianan could not be carried out under the Government's Prevent scheme while she was being actively investigated for suspected terror offences.
The inquest has previously been told that Rhianan was 14 when she was charged with terror offences in April 2021 after downloading a guide to making a pipe bomb. She had told school friends of her desire to blow up a synagogue and 'slash people's throats'.
The teenager, from Chesterfield in Derbyshire, was found dead in a Nottinghamshire children's home in May 2022, five months after the charges against her were dropped.
The Home Office had ruled she was the victim of grooming and radicalisation by adults.
The inquest was told on Friday that officers raised concerns that there was a lack of national guidance for them in dealing with cases of vulnerable minors who also posed a terror threat.
In internal MI5 emails read to the inquest, one officer said: 'We're seeing more and more of these cases and it doesn't sit comfortably.'
Another email read: 'Opening an investigation is sometimes the only way of understanding the threat and the necessity to investigate them in the interests of national security. No exception can be made in Rhianan's case.'
A senior MI5 officer in charge of its counter-terrorism investigations at the time, named only as Witness A, told the inquest on Friday: 'It's entirely possible for someone to be a victim or have mental health problems or be at risk of being radicalised – that does not mean they can't also be a potential perpetrator who we need to investigate to mitigate the threat that they pose.'
Witness A said that MI5's duty to prevent harm was not removed if the suspect was a vulnerable minor who had been exploited by adults.
Emily Carter, Rhianan's mother, maintains that the authorities, including MI5, counter-terrorism police and social services, failed to treat her daughter as a victim of exploitation by extremists.
Chesterfield coroner's court, sitting in London, heard evidence from Witness A that the service's guidelines had now changed to allow officers to recommend through the counter-terror police that an individual should be referred to the Home Office's national referral mechanism as a potential victim of grooming, coercion or human trafficking.
In a rare example of an MI5 officer giving evidence in open court, Witness A, who gave evidence from behind a screen, told the inquest that officers were being faced with a growing number of cases of young people involved in extremism and posing a potential terror threat.
The inquest heard that 13 per cent of individuals investigated for involvement in UK terror plots were under 18, a significant increase over the past few years.
Witness A told Judge Alexia Durran, the chief coroner, that this presented the intelligence service with added problems in safeguarding children while at the same time protecting national security.
The officer said: 'There's a tension between safeguarding and managing the threat.'
The inquest has previously heard Rhianan began to show disturbing signs of far-Right radicalisation after being groomed by her mother's boyfriend Dax Mallaburn, a US neo-Nazi.
At the same time, the teenager was in contact online with Chris Cook, another US white supremacist, who supplied her with instructions for making homemade bombs and weapons.
Rhianan became 'obsessed' with Adolf Hitler and Nazi politics, and at one point carved a swastika on her forehead.
The inquest heard that during a meeting in April 2022, the month before Rhianan's death, police updated MI5 and said the girl had recently started speaking with a German accent, and dressed in camouflage on Hitler's birthday.
Witnesses have said that before being found dead by staff at her care home, Rhianan's mood had appeared to be improving.
But Witness A said that even at that stage it had still not been possible for MI5 to conclude that the teenager no longer presented a threat to others.
The inquest continues.
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