Woolwich Murder Probe Updates

British Officials Knew Suspect in Soldier’s Death Had Ties to Al Qaeda

LONDON — Britain’s security agencies appeared headed for a period of deeply uncomfortable scrutiny after the government said Sunday that it had been aware for more than two years that one of the two men suspected of hacking an off-duty British soldier to death on a London street had ties to Al Qaeda.

A Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that the ministry had provided “consular assistance” in Kenya in 2010 to the man, Michael Adebolajo, 28, a British citizen of Nigerian descent. He had been arrested by the Kenyan police on suspicion of planning to join Al Shabab, an extremist group in Somalia that Britain has classified as a terrorist organization.

Mr. Adebolajo and the other suspect in the London attack — Michael Adebowale, 22, also of Nigerian origin — have been under armed police guard in separate London hospitals since the attack last Wednesday. The soldier — Lee Rigby, 25 — was run down by a car on the sidewalk outside an army barracks, then attacked with meat cleavers. Police officers arriving on the scene shot and wounded the two suspects.

The grisly brutality of the attack shocked Britain as few events have since the bombings on the London transit system on July 7, 2005, which killed 52 passengers and the four bombers. Sunday newspaper headlines about the case focused on what the government knew about Mr. Adebolajo and Mr. Adebowale and why no action was taken that might have prevented Mr. Rigby’s death.

In a statement on Sunday, the Foreign Office spokesman sought to tamp down the controversy, saying that the office’s role in the events in Kenya in November 2010 was limited to consular assistance to Mr. Adebolajo, “as normal for British nationals.” It did not address the Kenyan government’s statements that Mr. Adebolajo, using a false name, had been arrested near the Somali border with five Kenyan nationals while carrying Shabab literature.

The statement also did not address a claim made on BBC television on Friday night that Mr. Adebolajo spoke of rebuffing an attempt by MI5, the British domestic security agency, to recruit him. The claim was made by Ibrahim Hassan, a man who says he has links to Islamic extremist groups. Mr. Hassan said Mr. Adebolajo had told him that the recruitment attempt was made after he was deported from Kenya. British security officials quoted in the Sunday newspapers said that efforts to recruit Islamic extremists in such circumstances were common.

Mr. Hassan himself was arrested in the BBC studio immediately after the interview by Scotland Yard counterterrorism detectives, who said that the arrest was not connected to the killing of Mr. Rigby.

Mr. Hassan’s claims and his arrest added to a growing sense that inquiries into Mr. Rigby’s death are likely to delve into the murky world of the security agencies and their dealings with Islamic extremists.

A Parliamentary panel, the Intelligence and Security Committee, has said it expects to receive a preliminary report from the government on the attack this week.

Among the issues that the panel’s leading members have said they want to explore is whether MI5’s desire to penetrate groups with suspected terrorist ties had led to decisions not to prosecute people like Mr. Adebolajo under laws that bar Britons from engaging with terrorist organizations overseas. Security officials have said that MI5 viewed Mr. Adebolajo as posing a “low risk” of potential terrorism and did think he needed close monitoring.

Security officials have also confirmed that Mr. Adebolajo, and to a more limited extent Mr. Adebowale, had been known to British security officials for several years because they took part in protests in Britain that were organized by extremist groups, some of which involved violent clashes with the police.

Newspapers in Britain have carried accounts saying that Mr. Adebolajo had been heard in mosques and community centers in south London calling for jihadist attacks in Britain.

Muslim community groups have condemned the killing of Mr. Rigby in unequivocal terms, and say that many British Muslims are deeply apprehensive over a number of incidents of hostile graffiti and invective since his death, despite appeals for calm from Prime Minister David Cameron, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, and other prominent figures.

Tensions may rise further this week, when post-mortem details on Mr. Rigby are expected to be made public. The report may shed light on several aspects of the brutal attack that have seized public attention, including whether he was still alive after the car hit him, and whether he was beheaded, as some witnesses say. The police have so far declined to address those questions.

British police arrest 3 more men in soldier’s slaying

From the Associated Press

May 25, 2013, 2:02 p.m.

British police on Saturday arrested three more suspects in connection with the savage killing of an off-duty soldier that has raised fresh concerns about terrorism.

Scotland Yard said counter-terrorism officers arrested two men, aged 24 and 28, at a residential address in southeast London. A third man, 21, was arrested separately on a London street at the same time.

Police said they used a stun gun on two of the suspects. All three were detained on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder.

Officers have already detained several others in connection with the murder of 25-year-old soldier Lee Rigby, who was hit with a vehicle then repeatedly stabbed with knives while walking outside the Royal Artillery Barracks in the Woolwich, south London, on Wednesday afternoon.

The horrific scenes were recorded on witnesses’ cellphones, and a video has emerged in which one of the two suspects made political statements and warned of further violence as the dead soldier lay on the ground behind him.

The two main suspects, aged 22 and 28, were shot by police who arrived at the scene minutes later. They are under guard in two separate hospitals.

Three other people were arrested Thursday in connection with the probe. Two women were released without charge, and a 29-year-old man has been bailed pending further questioning.

Another man was arrested on suspicion of unspecified terrorism offenses late Friday immediately after he gave a BBC interview detailing the background of one of the main suspects. The man, identified by the BBC as Abu Nusaybah, was arrested on BBC premises and remains in custody.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Woolwich murder suspect: Michael Adebolajo held in Kenya in 2010

One of the two men held on suspicion of killing a soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich was arrested in Kenya in 2010, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

It said it gave consular assistance to Michael Adebolajo “as normal” in the circumstances.

He was believed to have been preparing to fight with Somali militant group al-Shabab, a Kenyan government spokesman told the BBC, and was later deported.

Police probing the murder have arrested a 22-year-old man in north London.

The arrest in the Highbury Grove area, on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, brings the total number currently being held in the case to six.
Community event

Members of Mr Rigby’s family have visited the scene of the killing, laying flowers at Woolwich Barracks where the 25-year-old drummer with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was based.

They hugged and comforted each other as they looked at some of the many thousands of floral tributes that have been left in his memory, before crossing the road to look at the spot where he was attacked in the street.

Several hundred people gathered at the scene a few hours later, some chanting Mr Rigby’s name and waving Help for Heroes flags.

The Met Police said it was a planned community event in which a group of people intended to lay a wreath.

A small group of English Defence League members also joined the crowd, prompting organisers to complain that their plans had been “hijacked”.

The Kenyan government had previously denied that Mr Adebolajo had ever visited the country, but spokesman Muthui Kariuki said there had been some confusion as he was arrested under a different name.

In video footage of his court appearance which emerged on Sunday, Mr Adebolajo is heard to say: “These people are mistreating us, we are innocent.”

Mr Kariuki told the BBC World Service’s Focus on Africa programme that Mr Adebolajo was then handed over to “British security officers” when it emerged he was a UK citizen.

BBC News East Africa correspondent Gabriel Gatehouse says Mr Adebolajo was detained in late November 2010 on an island off the coast of Kenya, near the Somalia border.

But our correspondent says the Kenyan government does not believe he ever reached Somalia.

Islamist insurgent group al-Shabab is affiliated to al-Qaeda and is thought to have 7,000 to 9,000 fighters. It killed 76 people in a double bomb attack in Uganda as they watched the 2010 World Cup.

Mr Adebolajo, 28, and a second man, Michael Adebowale, 22, were arrested on suspicion of the murder of Drummer Rigby on 22 May.

They remain in custody in hospital in a stable condition after being shot and wounded by police at the scene after the killing.

Three further men, aged 21, 24 and 28, were arrested in London on Saturday evening on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder – a Taser was used on two of them.

A 29-year-old man arrested earlier on suspicion of conspiracy to murder was released on bail on Saturday, while two women aged 29 and 31, arrested on Thursday, have been released without charge.

In an update on Sunday, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Osborne said officers were examining CCTV footage, social media and forensic material as part of their investigation into Drummer Rigby’s murder.

He appealed for any associates of Mr Adebolajo and Mr Adebowale who believed they might have useful information to come forward.
‘Refused to help’

Earlier, Home Secretary Theresa May told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme “500 officers and others” were working on the case, including counter-terrorism officers brought in from elsewhere in the country.

Senior Whitehall sources have previously confirmed to the BBC both suspects arrested at the scene of Drummer Rigby’s killing were already known to security services.

In an interview with ITV News, Mr Adebolajo’s brother-in-law, who was not named, said he was “tortured… violently and sexually” while in Kenyan detention, but when his family contacted the British government “they refused to do anything”.

The brother-in-law also said Mr Adebolajo had been approached on his return to the UK by MI5 who “asked him would he be a spy for them”, adding: “They basically pestered him for years, when he was trying to recover from something psychologically damaging.”

The claims are similar to those made by a friend of Mr Adebolajo, Abu Nusaybah, to the BBC’s Newsnight on Friday.

However, the Kenyan government spokesman Muthui Kariuki denied that Mr Adebolajo had suffered any mistreatment while in custody.

When asked if there were mistakes made by the security services in dealing with this case, Mrs May said: “What we have is the right procedures which say when things like this happen we do need to look at whether there are any lessons to be learned.”

She also said a new taskforce was being set up to look at whether new powers were needed to tackle extremism.

It will be chaired by the prime minister and include senior cabinet ministers and security chiefs.

In other developments:

Prayers were said on Sunday at a service dedicated to Drummer Rigby at St Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church, in Woolwich, at a service at the town’s St Mary Magdalene Parish Church and in his local church in his home town of Middleton, Greater Manchester
French authorities are treating the stabbing of a soldier in a Paris suburb as terrorism and are investigating whether it was a copycat attack. Defence Minister Jean Yves Le Drian said Private First Class Cedric Cordier had been targeted by an unknown man because of his profession
Mrs May also said “thousands” of people were potentially at risk of radicalisation in the UK and the government had introduced a new programme to help those who could be sucked in
David Cameron is to set up a taskforce to “look again” at the government’s strategy for dealing with extremism and radicalisation
Former Conservative leader Lord Howard said the Tories could form a pact with Labour to push through the controversial Communications Data Bill, despite Lib Dem objections. The bill would give police and security services access to details of all online communication in the UK and supporters say it would help root out would-be terrorists.

Woolwich murder probe: ‘Thousands’ at risk of radicalisation, says Theresa May

Thousands of people are potentially at risk of being radicalised in the UK, Home Secretary Theresa May has said.

She also told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show that those at risk were at “different points on what could be a path to violent extremism”.

Mrs May said a new taskforce would look at whether new powers were needed to tackle radicalisation.

Three more arrests have been made in connection with the killing of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

On Sunday, the family of Drummer Rigby visited the scene of his death and Woolwich Barracks.

Two men already arrested on suspicion of his murder remain in custody in hospital in a stable condition.

Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, were shot and wounded by police at the scene in Woolwich on Wednesday after the killing.

The Metropolitan Police said counter terrorism officers arrested three men, aged 21, 24 and 28, in London on Saturday evening on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder – a Taser was used on two of them.

‘Resignation issue’

Mrs May said “500 officers and others” were working on the case, including counter terrorism officers brought in from elsewhere in the country.

She said the government had introduced “a new programme, which is not for those immediately at danger of radicalisation, but for those who are perhaps further out”. Around 2,000 people had been worked with within the last year, she added.

When asked if she would now push ahead with a Communications Data Bill, Mrs May said: “The law enforcement agencies, the intelligence agencies, need access to communications data and that is essential to them doing their job.”

Mrs May has previously said such a bill would help modernise crime-fighting laws, to combat criminals’ use of internet-based phone calls and social media sites.

The bill was sent back for reassessment in December after criticism from a joint committee of MPs and peers, includes plans for internet service providers having to store for a year all details of online communication in the UK.

Mrs May said the government needed to look at how organisations outside government could help, such as Ofcom.

Senior Whitehall sources have previously confirmed to the BBC both suspects arrested at the scene of the killing of Drummer Rigby were previously known to security services.

When asked if there were mistakes made by the security services in dealing with this case, Mrs May said: “What we have is the right procedures which say when things like this happen we do need to look at whether there are any lessons to be learned.”

She also said the government’s Intelligence and Security Committee will review what the security service’s actions in this case, but added that this report “won’t happen immediately, because they will look back at the operation and the case”.

Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson also told the programme a Communications Data Bill should be “on the statute book before the next election”.

“It is a resignation issue for our home secretary if the Cabinet do not support her in this central part of what the security services do,” he added.

Lord Carlile, the Lib Dem former independent reviewer of terror laws, told the BBC that while it was not known whether the bill would have prevented this incident, “it might have [and] it would certainly help to prevent similar incidents in the future”.

But Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes said there is “no evidence at all” that the bill could have prevented the killing.

This area is widgetised! To make use of this area, put some widgets in the 'Main Sidebar' section.

• Trending Now

  anaheim arrest arrested burglary california children chp crime death drugs dui fbi gang gang violence gunman hollywood homicide investigation irvine jail killed lapd las vegas law enforcement lawsuit los angeles los angeles news los angeles police murder northern california orange county police police officer shooting protest rape robbery san bernardino san diego security guard shooting shot southern california suicide violence violent crime