Security services in spotlight after soldier murder
LONDON |
(Reuters) – Britain’s security services faced questions on Friday over whether they could have done more to prevent the murder of a soldier hacked to death in a busy London street after it emerged that his suspected killers were known to intelligence officers.
Suspects Michael Adebolajo, 28 and Michael Adebowale, 22, are under guard in hospital after being shot and arrested by police after the murder of 25-year-old Afghan war veteran Lee Rigby on Wednesday. They have not yet been charged.
Adebolajo, filmed justifying the killing as he stood near the body holding a knife and meat cleaver in bloodied hands, was born in Britain to a Nigerian immigrant family. Adebowale is a naturalised British citizen born in Nigeria.
Another man and a woman have also been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder, an early indication that police are investigating whether the attack was part of a wider plot.
Prime Minister David Cameron said a parliamentary committee would carry out an investigation into the role of the security services. Britain’s MI5 domestic spy agency had been aware of the men, but neither was considered a threat, a government source told Reuters.
Dramatic video footage showing the moment when police shot the two men was published on a British newspaper’s website on Friday. The shaky, 10-second clip shows one of the men sprinting towards a police car with a knife in his hand before he is shot and tumbles to the ground.
“It is important for the public to know that the security services and the police are operating properly,” former London police chief Ian Blair told BBC radio.
In an emotional news conference, Rigby’s family said their “hearts have been ripped apart”.
“You don’t expect it to happen when he’s in the UK. You think they’re safe,” said his tearful widow Rebecca Rigby, mother of their two-year-old son.
The attack has been condemned by mainstream British Muslim groups. It will increase attention on radical organisations like Al Muhajiroun, which organises provocative demonstrations against British troops and was banned in 2010.
Adebolajo, who converted to Islam and took the name “Mujahid” – warrior – attended lectures by Al Muhajiroun’s Syrian-born founder Omar Bakri, who was banished from Britain in 2005. Bakri praised the attack and said many Muslims would consider the victim a military target.
“I used to know him. A quiet man, very shy, asking lots of questions about Islam,” Bakri told Reuters in northern Lebanon. “It’s incredible. When I saw that, honestly I was very surprised – standing firm, courageous, brave. Not running away.”
Bakri said Adebolajo had lost contact with Al Muhajiroun in 2005. Bakri’s successor as leader of the organisation, Anjem Choudary, has said Adebolajo was in contact until two years ago.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said there would be a thorough investigation into the role of the police and intelligence agencies. The incident underlined how “difficult it is in a free society to be able to control everyone”, he added.
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Published on May 24, 2013
Imam condemns Woolwich killing as ‘barbaric murder’
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Exiled cleric praises UK attackers’ ‘courage’
DOMINIC EVANS
A Syrian-born Islamist cleric who taught one of the men accused of hacking to death an off-duty British soldier on a London street praised the attack for its “courage” and said Muslims would see it as a strike on a military target.
In an interview in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, where he has lived since being banished from Britain in 2005, Omar Bakri, founder of banned British Islamist group Al Muhajiroun, said he knew suspect Michael Adebolajo from his lectures a decade ago.
“When I saw the footage I recognised the face immediately,” Bakri told Reuters. “I used to know him. A quiet man, very shy, asking lots of questions about Islam.”
“What surprised me (is) the quiet man, the man who is very shy, decided to carry out an attack against a British soldier in the middle of the day in the middle of a street in the UK. In east London. It’s incredible.
“When I saw that, honestly I was very surprised – standing firm, courageous, brave. Not running away. Rather, he said why he carried (it out) and he wanted the whole world to hear it.”
The attack has been vociferously condemned by Muslim organisations across Britain.
Adebolajo, 28, a British-born convert from a Christian Nigerian immigrant family, went by the nickname Mujahid – warrior – after taking up Islam as a teenager in a suburb on the northeast outskirts of London.
He was filmed with his hands still covered with the blood of Afghan war veteran Lee Rigby, 25, after the attack. Clutching a butcher’s knife and meat cleaver, he said the killing was revenge for British participation in wars in foreign countries.
He and a second knife-wielding attacker, Nigerian-born naturalised British citizen Michael Adebowale, 22, are in hospital after being shot by police during their arrest. They have yet to be charged. Police have also arrested another man and a woman under suspicion of conspiracy to murder.
“WE DON’T SLEEP ON OUR GRIEVANCES”
The interview with Bakri in his flat in the Abu Samra district of Tripoli was twice interrupted by his infant son Osama, who broke into the room playing with a plastic toy. The boy was named after slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
“He is supposed to go fight (US President Barack) Obama in the future, and maybe to deal with the Obama of his times. We called him after… Sheikh Osama,” Bakri said, smiling often as he spoke but lacing light-hearted comments with hints of menace.
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U.K. Officials Add Homegrown Radicalism to Attack Mysteries
British Officials Add Homegrown Radicalism to Attack Mysteries
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
A man puts his head down as he looks at flowers for a U.K. soldier murdered in London on May 23, 2013.
A man puts his head down as he looks at flowers for a U.K. soldier murdered in London on May 23, 2013. Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
The young man dripping with blood after the murder of a U.K. soldier declared in a south London accent that he was acting in defense of “our lands.” He didn’t mean Britain.
The intent of the words and deeds are among the puzzles law enforcement has set to solving. As investigators piece together the attackers’ path to a vicious daylight assault outside a military barracks in London, security experts are again confronting the issue of home-grown terror.
“It’s the million-dollar question of why someone becomes radicalized,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and author of the book “We Love Death as You Love Life: Britain’s Suburban Mujahedeen,” due to be published shortly.
The killing caught on tape and broadcast around the world has reignited a debate about how to prevent homegrown attacks on British soil after more than a decade of U.K. engagement in foreign conflicts and how to allocate the 31 billion pounds ($47 billion) the government will spend in 2013-14 on public order and safety.
Michael Adobalajo, one of the two alleged attackers, was under arrest in a London hospital after being shot by police. The other alleged assailant remains unidentified and is in a separate hospital. The victim was named as Lee Rigby, a drummer in the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
Police said yesterday they also arrested a man and a woman, both 29, on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.
Al Muhajiroun
The Independent newspaper reported yesterday that Adebolajo was known to belong to a banned Islamist organization, Al Muhajiroun, which favors sharia law and publicly celebrated the Sept. 11 bombings in the U.S. He went by the name of Mujahid –a Muslim engaged in holy war — until two years ago, Anjem Choudary, the group’s former leader, was cited as saying by the newspaper. No charges have been filed.
All experts can do is guess about his motive.
“It’s often for a blend of personal and political reasons that someone is radicalized,” Pantucci said in an interview today. “Perhaps it’s what MI5 identify as ‘blocked mobility’ — your life is not going in the way you’d like or perhaps the call to radicalism is the loudest thing in your life.”
In 2010, a 21-year-old woman was sentenced to life in prison for stabbing British lawmaker Stephen Timms after she downloaded teachings from the Internet inciting jihad against non-Muslims.
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- London attacker: Michael Adebolajo, Adebowale born to devoute Christians (vanguardngr.com)
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- Woolwich terror killing: Security services face probe (irishexaminer.com)
- Woolwich attack: Cheers for our heroes… we will not be moved (telegraph.co.uk)
- Woolwich attack: Al Muhajiroun’s links to terrorism (telegraph.co.uk)
- Cleric: ‘Killer my pupil’.. but cops won’t nick him (thesun.co.uk)
- UK: Hate preacher Omar Bakri praise Woolwich murder, calling Muslim a ‘hero’ (themuslimissue.wordpress.com)
- UK soldier beheading: Islamist group claims it knows one attacker (ibnlive.in.com)
- British security services in spotlight after soldier murder (scooprocket.com)
