London Attack: British Intel Knew of Suspects in Hacking Death

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images(LONDON) — The two men who allegedly hacked a British soldier to death were known to intelligence services before the Wednesday incident, a British security official admitted Thursday. Still, the men weren’t deemed enough of a threat to arrest or monitor.

British intelligence will likely face questions about whether they should have been able to stop the assault near an army barracks as police have now widened their investigation, raiding a suspect’s father’s home and combing, inch-by-inch, the area around the attack that raised fears of terrorism’s return to London.

The soldier who died in southeast London has been identified as Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. “Drummer” is the equivalent of “private” in the Fusiliers, an infantry regiment in the British Army.

He was a veteran of Afghanistan, having served in Helmand in 2009. Before deploying to Afghanistan, he had served as part of the Queen’s Guard, standing duty outside London’s royal palaces.

One of the alleged attackers was a British Christian who converted to Islam, according to Anjem Choudary, the former leader of the group Al Muhajiroun, a banned Islamist Organization.

He is Michael Adebolajo, who converted to Islam in 2003 and changed his name to Mujahid, meaning one who wages jihad, Choudary told ABC News.

Choudary said Adebolajo was never a member of Al Muhajiroun but he knew him because he attended the group’s rallies from about 2005 to 2011.

After 2011, Choudary said, Adebolajo stopped attending rallies. Choudary said he has no idea what Adebolajo has been doing since, and he said that Adebolajo never suggested any antipathy to British soldiers or any willingness to commit violence.

“He was a very peaceful man,” Choudary said. “Never saw any kind of violence streak in him. Very quiet, timid man, in fact.”

Adebolajo is under arrest in the hospital, recovering from bullet wounds he suffered when police shot him after he allegedly killed the British soldier.

He apparently had no intention of getting away, asking passersby to call the police and inviting them to interview him on their camera phones. He spoke holding two bloody knives and his hands stained deep red, using rhetoric similar to that expressed in martyrdom videos.

“We swear by almighty Allah, we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone, your people will never be safe,” Abedolajo said calmly, according to ITV News, which first obtained the video. “Tell them to bring our troops back so we — so you — can all live in peace.”

British police and politicians are concerned about blowback attacks, especially in the London district of Woolwich, the scene of Wednesday’s attack, which has had a past history of racial tensions. A few hundred members of the anti-immigrant and right-wing party, the English Defense League, poured into Woolwich Wednesday night, wearing masks and throwing rocks at police. And police reported two separate attacks on Muslim centers in southern and eastern England.

In response, an additional 1,200 cops are patrolling London on Thursday, according to Scotland Yard, focusing on mosques and religious centers, as well as outside army barracks.

And British Prime Minister David Cameron took pains to appeal to all Britons, emphasizing that the attack wasn’t only on a single soldier.

“This was not just an attack on Britain and the British way of life. It was also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country,” Cameron told reporters.

Police in Essex, east of London, arrested a 43-year-old who was holding a knife outside of a Muslim prayer center Wednesday night. They charged him with attempted arson as well as suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon, Essex police told ABC News.

And in Gillingham, Kent, which is south of London, another man was arrested Wednesday night outside a mosque on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage, Kent police told ABC News.

British Muslim organizations were quick to condemn the attack.

“We must come together, isolate those who believe that extremism and violence are acceptable, and work to ensure that they meet the full force of the law,” Fiyaz Mughal, the director of Faith Matters, said in a statement. “We as the Muslim community will work against anyone who promotes such hatred.”

Still, at a moment when much of the country was upset by a crime clearly designed to shock, there were signs of bravery.

After the attack, a mother of two named Ingrid Loyau-Kennett approached one of the attackers and engaged him in conversation. Loyau-Kennet can be seen in a photograph calmly talking to the man. He was holding a bloody knife, and she appeared unafraid.

“I just talked to him. He looked like a normal guy. He wasn’t high, he wasn’t on drugs. A normal guy pissed off with the fact [as he said], ‘Muslim women and children are dying in their countries by the hand of white men,'” she told ITV’s Daybreak. ” He was very, very close to me. He was almost touching me … I asked him, what’s the point. [He said] ‘war in London.'”

An ITV presenter asked her why she wasn’t scared. “Better me than a child,” Loyau-Kennet said. “Because, unfortunately, there were more and more mothers with children stopping around. So it was even more and more important that I talk to him and then ask him what he wanted.”

Cameron called Loyau-Kennet a hero.

“When told by the attacker he wanted to start a war in London, she replied, ‘You are going to lose. It is only you against many,'” Cameron said. “She spoke for us all.”

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