Lee Rigby killing: British-born pair convicted of murder

After unanimous verdicts against Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, PM vows to defeat ideology of violence

The first Islamist terrorists to carry out their plan to murder on British soil without killing themselves in the process have been convicted of mutilating and attempting to behead a soldier, as the prime minister vowed to step up efforts to defeat the al-Qaida ideology of violence.

British-born Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale were convicted of murdering Lee Rigby last May, after scouring an area around the Woolwich barracks hunting for a soldier to kill.

The savagery of the murder, in which Rigby, 25, was repeatedly stabbed and hacked at the neck by a cleaver, tore at community relations when mosques were attacked.

It was the first murderous attack in Britain by those motivated by the al-Qaida ideology of violence since the 7 July 2005 bombings of London’s transport system by four suicide bombers.

It showed the continuing power of that ideology to turn Britons – in this case both with professional parents and who had been seemingly integrated into national life – into zealots who believed they were soldiers of Allah commanded to murder in retaliation for western foreign policy in Muslim lands.

Adebolajo, 29, the dominant of the pair of converts to Islam, looked in the direction of the media and kissed a Qur’an as he was taken to the cells. The jury took just under 90 minutes to convict him and Adebowale after one of the most overwhelming cases of guilt in English criminal history, with key parts of the attack caught on CCTV and smartphones.

After running Rigby down with a car, mutilating him so badly that he had to be identified by dental records, and pulling his body into the road, they stayed at the scene and encouraged people to take p ictures with their mobile phone cameras.

While convicting them of murder, the jury accepted their defence to a charge of attempting to murder armed officers who turned up to arrest them. Adebolajo and Adebowale claimed they charged at the armed officers clutching a machete and unloaded gun, not because they wanted to kill them, but because they wanted to be shot dead and achieve martyrdom.

The harrowing and sometimes bizarre evidence was witnessed during the trial by Rigby’s family, some of whom left the court as details of the death of the soldier who had survived Afghanistan, only to die on a London street, were heard by the Old Bailey.

The jury went out shortly after 11am yesterday, returning to deliver unanimous verdicts which were greeted by sobs. Rigby’s stepfather, Ian, wiped away tears and put his arm around the soldier’s mother, Lyn, who was crying.

After the verdicts, the Rigby family said in a statement their main focus was the soldier’s two-year-old son: “These people have taken him away from us forever but his memory lives on in all of us and we will never forget him. We are very proud of Lee, who served his country, and we will now focus on building a …read more