Axel Rudakubana Sent to the Old Bailey Over Alleged Attacks on Belmarsh Prison Staff

Axel Rudakubana, serving a minimum 52-year term for murdering three children at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, appeared by video link at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday. He faces four charges over alleged attacks on prison staff at HMP Belmarsh. No pleas were entered, and the hearing was over in about ten minutes.

Rudakubana Sent to Old Bailey Over Prison Staff Attacks

London, United Kingdom — Axel Rudakubana, 20, appeared from Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital on a video link and spoke only to confirm his name, his date of birth and that he could hear the chief magistrate. Prosecutors say he threw boiling water mixed with sugar at a prison officer, threatened a second officer and punched a third. All four charges were sent to the crown court, and he was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on 19 October.

He Appeared by Video Link From Broadmoor

Rudakubana was in court for roughly ten minutes. He wore a pale grey and blue tracksuit top and rested his head on his left hand for the duration, according to reporters in the room. Four hospital staff sat with him. He was represented by Greg Stewart and was not asked to enter any pleas. It was the first time the allegations had been set out in public; the charges themselves were announced by the Metropolitan Police on 31 July. Broadmoor is a high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire, where he was moved from Belmarsh in July. A video link from a secure hospital is now the ordinary way a defendant in his position appears before magistrates — which means the court, the prosecution and the press were all looking at a screen rather than at the man in the dock.

The Four Charges He Faces

The Metropolitan Police said Rudakubana was charged on 28 July 2026 with four offences. The first is an assault on an emergency worker on 6 May 2025. The second is attempted grievous bodily harm on 8 May 2025. The third is unauthorised possession of an offensive weapon in prison on 26 June 2025. The fourth is an assault on an emergency worker on 28 October 2025. The Met gave his date of birth as 7 August 2006. The alleged offences span six months, and every one of them is said to have taken place while he was a serving prisoner at HMP Belmarsh, the Category A jail in south-east London.

What Prosecutors Say Happened in That Cell

Prosecutors told the court that on 8 May 2025 Rudakubana threw boiling water mixed with sugar through the hatch of his cell door at a prison officer. Court reporting described the mixture as "prison napalm," made by using a kettle to boil water and then mixing in sugar. Two days earlier, on 6 May 2025, the prosecution alleges he threatened to "soak" a female officer outside his cell if she did not pass him a newspaper, and then threw an "unknown liquid" at her through the same hatch. On 28 October 2025, he is alleged to have punched a male prison officer in the face. The officer was trying to establish whether Rudakubana had taken his medication at the time.

What the Court Was Told About the Officers

On the most serious allegation, prosecutors told the court that "prompt medical attention prevented lasting injury" to the officer. No further detail about that officer's condition was put before the court. When the alleged boiling water attack was first reported in May 2025, The Independent said the officer had been taken to hospital as a precautionary measure, did not require further treatment and was discharged later that evening, and was expected to return to work the following week. A Prison Service spokesperson said at the time: "Violence in prison will not be tolerated and we will always push for the strongest possible punishment for attacks on our hardworking staff." None of the three officers was identified by name in court. The liquid thrown during the 6 May 2025 incident caused no damage, the court was told.

The Newspaper, the Medication and the Stone Shards

The weapon charge relates to sharpened stone shards. Prosecutors said the shards appeared to have been prised from the floor of the defendant's own cell and were found stuck to the underside of a shelving unit. When questioned by a prison officer, the court was told, "he said that he was keeping them for self-defence." Reporting of the hearing also records a claim by Rudakubana that prison officers had been poisoning his food after the alleged boiling water incident. That assertion was made by the defendant, not established as fact, and nothing in the hearing indicated it had ever been investigated or substantiated.

Sent to the Old Bailey, Remanded in Custody

England and Wales' Chief Magistrate, Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring, addressed Rudakubana directly. "As has been outlined, one of the charges you face can only be dealt with at the crown court," he said. "The other offences are related and amount to a series of similar offences. They therefore can be and will be sent alongside the indictable only offence. Those have all been sent to the crown court. You will appear there on the 19th of October. You will be remanded in custody." Attempted grievous bodily harm is an indictable-only offence, which can only be tried at the crown court, and it carried the other three charges with it. Remanding a defendant in custody is the default outcome for a person already serving a life sentence, and it leaves the substance of the allegations to be tested later.

How He Got From Belmarsh to Broadmoor

Rudakubana was transferred from HMP Belmarsh to Broadmoor on 23 July 2026, after it was concluded that he could not be managed safely inside a prison. It came about a week before the second anniversary of the attack of 29 July 2024. The Ministry of Justice said the decision followed an independent clinical assessment under the Mental Health Act. "Following rigorous security checks, the offender has been transferred to a high-security psychiatric unit, where he will remain until assessed fit to return to prison," the department said. "This transfer does not change his sentence — which remains at 52 years — and of which he will serve every single day." Offenders in these units are treated as patients rather than prisoners, and the law allows a swift return to prison if treatment is no longer required.

The Families Say He Is Manipulating the System

Chris Walker of the law firm Bond Turner, who represents the three bereaved families, called the transfer "another move by AR who would appear to be attempting, once again, to manipulate the system." He said the families had been given "the barest of details" and were seeking a meeting with the authorities. Earlier he told BBC Breakfast it was "a deep concern of mine that this is a pattern starting to develop by him trying to retraumatise the families from his cell." Mark Fairhurst, national chair of the Prison Officers' Association, said Rudakubana had "played the system" and should spend his whole sentence in prison in solitary confinement, warning that his members would be "placed at risk without the protections afforded to staff in prisons because he is now classed as a patient." Sally Jameson, a junior housing minister and a former prison officer, said Rudakubana would be returned to prison "as soon as possible" but that she was not familiar with why the decision to move him had been taken. Asked about the prospect of him receiving benefits, she told LBC: "It's not right, I sincerely hope that he won't be qualifying for benefits."

What the Prison Numbers Actually Show

The official figures are published, and they do not point one way. Ministry of Justice data show that in the 12 months to December 2025 the overall rate of assaults in prisons rose 2.7 per cent to 360 assaults per 1,000 prisoners — 31,345 assaults — with 3,484 of them classed as serious, an increase of 2.9 per cent. At the same time, assaults on staff fell 4.5 per cent to 117 per 1,000 prisoners, or 10,142 incidents. In the latest quarter assaults dropped 8 per cent. Staff made up 48 per cent of assault victims in female prisons and 31 per cent in male ones, and 7,438 incidents in male establishments involved a weapon. The Independent reported the 2024 total of 10,605 assaults on staff in male and female jails was the highest in a decade, up from 9,204 in 2023 and nearly three times the 3,640 recorded in 2014. In April 2026, Manchester Arena plotter Hashem Abedi attacked staff at HMP Frankland with boiling oil and homemade weapons in a planned ambush. The government launched a trial of Tasers for specialist prison officers, alongside a protective body armour rollout, in July 2025.

The Case That Came Before These Charges

Rudakubana was 17 when he carried out a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on 29 July 2024. He murdered Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and attempted to murder eight other children and two adults. He was jailed in January 2025 for a minimum of 52 years; the judge could not impose a whole-life order because he was under 18 at the time of the attack. The public inquiry into the murders has heard there was a "wholesale and general failure" by several agencies, and its chair, Sir Adrian Fulford, said the attack was not unforeseeable — describing Rudakubana as having a "known predilection for knife crime." The inquiry is continuing. He was referred to the counter-extremism programme Prevent three times; none of those referrals was progressed. The four charges he now faces are allegations. No pleas have been entered, and he will answer them at the Old Bailey on 19 October.

By Jessica Ali, Staff Writer

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Sources: BBC News, Reuters, Sky News, The Independent, the Liverpool Echo, The Sun, the Press Association, the Metropolitan Police, the Ministry of Justice and HM Prison & Probation Service safety-in-custody statistics.