Woolwich murder: ‘no amount of justice will bring Lee back’

Family of murdered soldier talk outside court after guilty verdict of pride they had in 25-year-old

The family of Lee Rigby had sat through every day in the harrowing, three-week trial of his two killers, listening to the horror of what they had done. At times the evidence was so unbearable that some of them had to leave the courtroom. Only a thin sheet of brown paper separated them from the two men in the dock.

On Thursday, when the jury had convicted the defendants after deliberating for 90 minutes at the Old Bailey, the message that Rigby’s relatives wanted to send was about the pride they had in the 25-year-old whose memory would live on through his two-year-old son.

As the guilty verdict was returned, Rigby’s stepfather, Ian, placed a comforting arm around the soldier’s sobbing mother, Lyn. In a statement issued outside court afterwards, she said: “We would like to thank everyone for their overwhelming support. We are satisfied that justice has been served, but unfortunately no amount of justice will ever bring Lee back.”

Rigby’s wife, Rebecca, the mother of their son, Jack, said: “This has been the toughest time of our lives and no one should have to go through what we have been through as a family. These people have taken away my baby’s dad but Lee’s memory lives on through our son and we will never forget him. I now want to build a future for Jack and make him proud of his dad like we all are.”

The family then eschewed the convention of being whisked away from the court in a vehicle and walked away, to a smattering of applause, melting into the capital’s streets where Lee Rigby had the misfortune to encounter two terrorists who murdered him simply because he was a soldier.

A drummer in the 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, Rigby had wanted very deeply to serve. He was eventually accepted into the army in 2006, after being knocked back three times by a recruitment officer who noticed signs of dyslexia.

His first posting was in 2006, to Cyprus. The following year, he deployed to Jordan, where he learned his operational trade as a machine-gunner. He spent much of his first three years in the army performing ceremonial duties at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Tower of London.

It wasn’t until 2009 that Rigby went off to battle, when he was sent to Afghanistan as a machine-gunner in the Fire Support Group, based in patrol base Woqab in the town of Musa Qala, the most northerly outpost in Helmand province. Seven soldiers from Rigby’s battalion were killed during a six-month period.

Rigby himself came under fire, according to his best friend, Owein O’Brien. “We came under attack several times … Scary for both of us,” O’Brien told BBC Panorama. “Like two little schoolboys. Absolutely scared.” It was after one close shave, when a bullet smashed a picture frame at the side of his bed, that the young soldier telephoned his mother to tell her he …read more