Southport: FBI to help police with inquiry into killer's deleted searches
The FBI are providing support as British police try to recover deleted searches from the Southport killer's online accounts.Axel Rudakubana cleared his internet history just before he travelled to the dance class where he stabbed three girls death and injured many more in the Merseyside town on 29 July last year.Senior investigating officer Det Ch Insp Jason Pye said in January that the process to retrieve his online history "could be years" because the crime had not been categorised as terrorism as officers did not find evidence that Rudakubana had been motivated by any specific ideology.If it had been, he said, the process could have been easier.
Investigators found no signs of any allegiance to a single cause, which is why - despite Rudakubana pleading guilty to downloading a terror manual - his case has never been treated as a terrorism investigation.They have had to apply to access Rudakubana' search history on Google and Microsoft, which are based in the US, via a specialist prosecutor in the country.
In a new joint statement, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Merseyside Police confirmed the FBI were now involved as the inquiry continues.It said: "A specialist liaison CPS prosecutor in the United States has been working with international partners to obtain material which may be relevant."We are thankful to the US Department of Justice and the FBI for their ongoing assistance and the importance which they have placed upon our request."Merseyside Police have previously said that Rudakubana's view of violent footage of the attempted murder of a bishop in Australia - made minutes before he left home on the day of the attack - was the only thing that remained from his online history after he deleted his searches.Officers have contacted Google, which owns browser Chrome, and Microsoft, which owns search engine Bing, to uncover what Rudakubana had been searching in the months before the attack.
Detectives also discovered more than 164,000 documents had been downloaded from the internet and stored on Rudakubana's devices.Jailing the 18-year-old for a minimum of 52 years in January, Mr Justice Goose said the material showed he had "a longstanding preoccupation with violent killing and genocide".At the time, Det Ch Insp Pye said an ongoing process in the US courts to retrieve Rudakubana's online searches "could be years"."Our case has always been - based on the evidence - it's not counter-terrorism. There is nothing in terms of ideology," he said."So I couldn't go down that path to try and get that information any quicker."There is a process of getting it quicker, but because it's in the serious organised crime, major crime category, unfortunately I can't get it as quick as we would like."
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Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Sex addict Anthony Weiner on jail, Trump and Hillary Clinton
As nominative determinism might suggest, Anthony Weiner was perhaps always doomed. A prominent New York congressman and rapidly rising star in the Democratic Party, married to Hillary Clinton's glamorous adviser, Huma Abedin, it all came crashing down — in spectacularly lurid style — in May 2011, when Weiner accidentally posted a sexually explicit photo of his bulging crotch to Twitter. The headlines wrote themselves, with the New York Post gleefully declaring, 'Weiner exposed'. First, though, he denied it, claiming his account had been hacked (the New York Post — 'Weiner: I'll stick it out'), before admitting to having sent similar pictures to numerous women ('Naked truth'), and finally resigning ('Weiner's rise and fall'). Six months later, Abedin gave birth to their son, Jordan. Undeterred, Weiner attempted a return to politics in 2013 in the bold hope of becoming mayor of New York ('Weiner's second coming'), before more reports of sexting emerged — this time under the alias Carlos Danger — and he crashed out in the primary. Through this all, Abedin stood by him. But in 2016 it emerged that he had posted a sexually explicit photo with Jordan, then four, sleeping next to him. And, a few weeks later, that one of those he had sexted was a 15-year-old girl. An FBI probe was launched the following year and he was sentenced to 21 months for transferring obscene material to a minor (he served a little over 15 months in prison). Abedin filed for divorce ('Huma cuts off Weiner') and would later say that Weiner 'didn't just break my heart, he ripped it out and stomped on it over and over again'. In the decade since, Weiner faded from view, before reappearing as an in-house liberal at WABC, a conservative talk radio station. He continued therapy for what he says is a sex addiction. Now, 14 years after first derailing his own promising career, the indefatigable Weiner is staging (another) comeback, running for a seat on New York City Council. Sarah Batchu, one of his opponents, told The New York Times that Trump's victory has allowed other scandal-prone politicians to believe they too could return. ('Trump got elected as a 34-time felon,' Weiner himself said last month.) 'Everyone deserves a second chance, but this guy has had third, fourth and fifth chances,' Batchu said. And, just days before his former wife Abedin marries Alexander Soros, the son of billionaire George Soros and heir to his fortune, 60-year-old Weiner is walking the streets of the East Village in Manhattan, dog and journalist in tow, in his bid for elected office once again. Tabloid-friendly surname aside, this was not supposed to be Weiner's trajectory. At the age of 27, the Brooklyn native became the youngest councillor in New York City's history; then, as an acclaimed, gifted congressman representing New York and known for his straight-talking, sometimes brash modus operandi, a rising star in the Democratic Party and an eligible bachelor in DC circles. In 2007, he began dating Huma Abedin, the glamorous longtime aide to Hillary Clinton. In her 2021 memoir, Both/And, Abedin wrote that after their first kiss her 'head started spinning and didn't stop'. At 32, it was her first serious relationship. They married in 2010, in a ceremony officiated by Bill Clinton, and became a bona fide Washington power couple. • NYC mayor election: Everything you need to know As if his infidelities — from less than a year into their marriage — weren't painful enough, they came with possibly catastrophic professional and political consequences too. 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Sex addiction is not listed as a formal diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, while the World Health Organisation recognises compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as a impulse-control disorder, not an addiction. It's perhaps an 'academic conversation', Weiner says. He attends groups once a week and attendance, he says, is growing — 'Rooms are fuller and fuller, more and more people, more and more meetings.' Weiner has drawn connections between his past career and his sexual behaviour. 'You become obsessive about people's affirmation,' he says when I press him. So the obvious question is, isn't there now a high risk of relapse if he returns to politics? 'I don't think this is an example of an alcoholic who wants to be a bartender,' he says. But he does admit the link. 'I would argue that a lot of people in public life are really jazzed up by the affirmation. They get it. I just have to be mindful of it. But it's a reasonable question.' Nonetheless, one might suggest that running for public office would be the very last thing you would do if you were him, so… why? 'The candidates were running this kind of frictionless campaign,' he says of his opponents, 'trying not to offend any of the traditional Democratic constituencies.' But in the end, Weiner thought, 'The only reason not to run is that people would say something mean about me, or would bring up my past, and I didn't think that was a good enough reason.' He raised the idea of running again with Huma and Jordan, now 13, over dinner one night. They were supportive. 'Her take was, look, this is what you're good at.' He reckons the issues associated with running in this new part of the city — and as 'more of a centrist candidate in a very progressive district' — are arguably bigger challenges than the scandals. I ask about Abedin and her imminent wedding to Soros. 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With someone he's dating? 'Dating is… It's a lame word…' He trails off before talking about the dog instead. 'You see, she wants to play. She just doesn't quite know how to do it.' At this point Billy begins humping another dog. I suggest this might be too on the nose to include in the interview. 'A little bit,' he concedes. 'You can kind of see the lead for your piece taking shape right now in front of us. I'll write your lead for you: 'You can tell Anthony Weiner's dog has been around him for a while.' ' We wrap up the subject of dating. 'Put it this way: it's fraught. But I don't date much.' Does he stand any chance of winning, though? Weiner thinks his opponents in the upcoming council election are tame. 'In today's world, you've got these other people that I'm running against [who] cut their teeth in a very different time, where it's: how do you get this? How do you not offend this group?' He talks about homelessness. 'You have homeless people who are mentally unwell living on our streets. It's a problem. Everyone recognises [it], every candidate recognises it… This group of politicians that I am up against, they look at the situation and say, all right, who's on this side of the problem? Who's on this side? 'And there are people like the American Civil Liberties Union, who said that a homeless person has a right to be on that street right now in our public space. But most people in this part [of the city], most people who vote, they look at that and say, 'How do we solve that problem?' ' His putative return to politics is not without backlash. Sarah Batchu proposed a bill in February nicknamed the Weiner Act that would ban registered sex offenders — of which Weiner is one — from holding public office. His top opponent is Harvey Epstein, a previously unknown candidate who went viral when Saturday Night Live did a sketch about his name: neither Harvey Weinstein nor Jeffrey Epstein. 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Scottish Sun
3 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Miss Universe finalist shares pics of horror injuries as ex who called her ‘stupid c***' in text is cleared of assault
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