The daughter of murdered MP Sir David Amess told ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme Prevent failed her father ‘catastrophically’
Words by Westminster Producer Elisa Menendez
The daughter of murdered MP Sir David Amess has said the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme Prevent failed her father “catastrophically” and suggests her family were misled over the inquest into his killing.
In an interview with ITV News, Katie Amess hit out at the fact her father’s killer was known to authorities seven years before the murder but was not followed up on properly after he was reported to Prevent.
She told of her family’s anger of being denied answers by officials as she urged for an inquest to be re-opened to investigate why killer Ali Harbi Ali wasn’t assessed by authorities, and why his case was dropped after Prevent officials conducted just one interview with him.
“I just think that there’s no accountability and nobody wants to be held responsible,” she told Political Editor Robert Peston.
“My dad worked for 40 years for his people, for the country, and he is owed the respect of finding out where he was failed, why he was failed, and to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
She said trying to cope with her father’s murder feels like she’s “living in a nightmare”, adding: “You wake up and you think this cannot be real. This has to be a dream.”
Ms Amess suggested “something weird is going on” and warned “this won’t be the last time that another person has to sit here having lost a family member.”
‘The pain and the horror of everything that happened and trying to keep alive, keep positive and keep happy knowing that this happened to your father is absolutely unimaginable’
‘Prevent isn’t preventing anything’
Ali was convicted of fatally stabbing Sir David, 69, on October 15, 2021, at a church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, where the veteran Conservative MP was holding an advice surgery for his Southend West constituents. Ali was sentenced the following year to a whole-life prison term.
Seven years earlier, Ali had been put on the government’s Prevent programme, which aims to stop young people from becoming radicalised.
Ali was reported to Prevent in 2014 but after one meeting, his case was only followed up once by the anti-extremism programme.
In July, Essex senior coroner Lincoln Brookes decided not to resume Sir David’s inquest, which had been adjourned once Ali was charged with murder.
Mr Brookes said he was provided with a report into Ali’s involvement in the Prevent programme which found a six-month case review was “missed” but that a 12-month review revealed “nothing of concern”.
Outlining his decision not to resume the inquest, he said the evidence he had received did not enable him “to say that there was arguably a point in time when the authorities should have appreciated a real and immediate risk of the perpetrator committing an attack on Sir David”.
Ms Amess is now demanding to know why that six-month review was missed and why she is being refused an inquest into how that happened.
“The subsequent meeting with him – they decided that he wasn’t a terrorist because he literally just said ‘I’m not a terrorist’,” she continued.
“He even said during the trial that he just knew to nod his head and or shake his head at the right places and they would leave him alone. And that’s exactly what they did.”
“The scheme failed catastrophically,” she added. “Not just my dad, not just me and my family, but other members of the public.
“There’s a lot of instances where Prevent hasn’t prevented anything, it’s just allowed people to disappear back to do these terrorist acts. And it’s also failed other MPs because I’m telling you right now, this won’t be the last time that another person has to sit here having lost a family member.”
Ali’s trial also heard how he bought a knife and carried it around in his bag year after year, scoping out MPs he was thinking about murdering.
Asked by Peston about why the security services didn’t know how dangerous Ali was, Ms Amess replied: “I’m not allowed to know why, I’m not allowed an inquest”.
Calls for inquest to be re-opened
The coroner argued in his decision that at an early stage, Ms Amess and her mother didn’t want the inquest re-opened. Ms Amess told ITV News this was a “cop out” and they weren’t told an inquest would be an opportunity to air these grievances.
She explained how her mother had a stroke soon after, and wasn’t in a fit state of mind to be making such decisions.
“We were told that an inquest would give the guy a chance to proclaim more about what he did and how amazing what he did was and that it would be highly traumatic to put the family through it,” Ms Amess said.
“We had no idea. Nobody told us the inquest is the time to find out what went wrong.”
When Ms Amess’ mother was better, they sought legal advice but were told the time that was allowed to conduct the inquest had expired.
They took their case to the Home Office arguing they were ill-advised and asked for an exception but they were “refused”. She launched a civil case in court to gain more time to gather documents to re-open the case and hit out at then-Home Office Secretary, James Cleverly, for not helping.
She said: “Everything I’ve tried to do has failed. These people came to the funeral and were crying and said it was so sad it had happened, yet when I needed support and to be allowed to find out what happened, nobody was anywhere to be seen.
“I sit here by myself. I don’t see any of his friends or supporters here helping me and I would like to know why.”
Questions over lack of police presence at advice surgery
Ms Amess is also upset that Essex Police did not attend her father’s advice surgery the day after threats were made against his safety. She explained how the family had received calls the night before his murder making threats, which her brother reported to police.
She said she was “furious” that the coroner supported Essex Police in saying it made all the right steps after the threat was made, describing it as an “absolute insult”.
The force confirmed it received reports, adding in a statement: “We were contacted around 9pm on Thursday 14 October following reports of threats made to a man in his 30s.
“We immediately launched an investigation and a woman in her 20s and a man in his 30s, both from Southend, were arrested.
“This incident and the murder of Sir David were not linked in any way, and the people arrested and the person the threat was made directly to were known to each other and none were not connected to Ali Harbi Ali.”
Essex Police said that “as with all forces up and down the country”, it does not provide officers to police constituency surgeries.
However, Ms Amess and the family feel that given the timing of the threats and the nature of them, there should have automatically been a police presence the following day at the surgery.
She said: “If a threat is made to a Member of Parliament’s life, you go to their surgery the next day. The police were not there the next day. The facts are the facts are the facts.
“They can say whatever they want now, I don’t care, they were not at the surgery and my dad is dead.”
She added: “They [Essex Police] can say whatever they want about… if they’d have come to his surgery, possibly, they might not have saved him. But the guy who did it has already admitted that he went to other surgeries, saw a police presence and turned around.”
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Questions around coroner meeting with counter-terrorism police
Sir David’s family were also shocked to discover the coroner had a meeting with counter-terrorism police in 2022 but the details of it were never shared.
“I don’t know what happened in that meeting,” said Ms Amess. “We have no idea what they knew about the guy. We’ve never had a chance to find out what was known about him.
“As a family, we have a right to know that. This is my dad, it’s somebody’s husband.”
“Right now we’re just brushing it under the carpet like nobody was to blame and carrying on,” she added. “But this is a democracy that we live in. The government works for the people. They need to give us answers so that we can as a society, learn from it.”
‘The worst thing that could happen to anybody’
During the interview, Ms Amess detailed how her father’s death has devastated her family as she paid tribute to Sir David for being “such an amazing dad” who was an inspiration to her.
“He was hilarious. He was absolutely full of life, totally mischievous, inappropriate at times,” she said.
“Very hard working. He wasn’t home that much because he was always out meeting the people and with his constituents. But he always, always made time for me.”
She told how her father’s murder has left her with post traumatic stress syndrome, and said she is trying to “block it out” as every time she thinks about what happened that day it causes her to have such a “visceral and physical reaction”.
She said: “The pain and the horror of everything that happened and trying to keep alive and keep positive and keep happy knowing that this happened to your father and your husband is just absolutely unimaginable.
“And it’s definitely taken a huge toll mentally, physically, and life is extremely, extremely hard.”
What the Home Office, Essex Police and the coroner have said
The Home Office said: “Our thoughts continue to be with Sir David Amess’ family and friends.
“The attack on Sir David Amess was an awful tragedy, the safety of members of Parliament is paramount and significant work has been taken forward in response to his tragic killing.
“Prevent is a vital tool to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism and tackles all ideological causes of terrorism.”
In his decision, the coroner wrote: “The information made available to me is that the perpetrator had intentionally ‘gone dark’ using secure internet communication so as to present as being of no threat in the coming years.
“Therefore even acknowledging the imperfections in the handling of his mid-teens Prevent intervention, I have no evidential basis to consider this attack was possibly preventable so many years and imponderables later.
“It would be speculative to assume that national security services do, should or could, detect and track every Islamic State sympathiser.”
An Essex Police spokesperson said: “Sir David Amess was a thoroughly committed public servant who worked tirelessly for his community.
“In the immediate aftermath of his murder, two of our heroic unarmed officers ran into the face of danger, trying desperately to save him and of course detaining his killer.”
The force added: “We are aware that what is in effect a protective claim form has been filed at court, however as these papers have not been served on our force, we are unable to comment any further upon them.
“We remain committed to supporting our elected members across the county in the execution of their public duty and to this end we regularly review and advise around security arrangements for our Members of Parliament.”
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