Woolwich London terror attack?

[Malcolm Pryce]

Yes, his post earlier in the year in May is well worth a look:


www.chrisspivey.co.uk/stop-step-back-and-think


In it he contrasts images downloaded from the Web of people who have been butchered and decapitated with the photos of Lee Rigby lying in the road without a drop of blood anywhere, even though according to the Official Narrative he had just had his head chopped off. It's ridiculous. Whatever did or did not happen, these are not photos of a freshly-decapitated man.


Also, Chris Spivey asks how, given that Lee Rigby was wearing civvies, and a Help for Heroes sweat shirt, and was not leaving the Barracks, but returning from another part of town, the assailants knew he was a soldier. I expect this sticky point explains why the BBC News reporting the trial tonight made a big show of displaying the army backpack he was said to have been wearing at the time of the attack.


Still, the accused allegedly freely admitted it to cops at the time and in taped interviews.


What does it all mean?

[David Guyatt]

Exaro is reporting today that MI5 have been forced to turn over sensitive files that show that both killers of Lee Rigby were "known" to the security service for several years.

Read more HERE.

[David Guyatt]

Yet another unsafe inquiry where relevant witnesses were not interviewed in case they provided unwanted information...

Lee Rigby: inquiry into murder of fusilier failed to seek out witnesses'

Parliamentary report, which is set to clear security services of major errors, comes under attack

• Vikram Dodd
  
• The Guardian, Monday 24 November 2014
  

Lee Rigby was murdered in 2013. The report into his death is poised to clear the security services of major criticisms. Photograph: Henry Szymanski / Barcroft Media

The official inquiry into the jihadi-inspired murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 is poised to clear the security services of major criticisms but is facing claims that it failed to speak to witnesses who say the plot's leader was repeatedly contacted by the security services before the attack.
The report by parliament's intelligence and security committee (ISC), due out on Tuesday, will set out what the intelligence services knew before the attack. Fusilier Rigby, 25, was run over and then butchered by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale in May 2013 on a street in Woolwich, south-east London, in front of numerous witnesses. Both were sentenced in February to life imprisonment for the soldier's murder, with Adebolajo, the dominant of the pair, told he would never be released.
The Guardian understands that no individual will be criticised in the report into the security services' handling of the case and that MI5 itself will not be blamed for failing to stop the attack.
But the committee is alleged to have reached its conclusions without speaking to a number of witnesses, including a family member and lawyers, who claim Adebolajo complained a year before the attack of repeated approaches by the security services.
Those making the allegations say they raise concerns about MI5's conduct and offer a possible explanation of what contributed to his transformation from extremist into terrorist murderer.
Adebolajo has said he was repeatedly pressed by the security services to turn informant for three years before he and Adebowale murdered Rigby.
Any failure by the inquiry to speak to non-establishment witnesses raises the danger that while the report satisfies questions in Westminster it may lack credibility in communities outside, such as among British Muslims.
Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs committee, told the Guardian that the ISC could have sought testimony from witnesses even if they were in prison. Vaz said: "These people have to be talked to. It does not have to be in public it could be in private, to avoid the oxygen of publicity, or in writing. I would have thought anybody who could assist the committee would be relevant."
The ISC's chair, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, defended the committee, saying people were free to write to the inquiry if they wished and it was their responsibility if they chose not to.
Important parts of the ISC's full report will be denied to the public because they are deemed to contain sensitive information about the security services. The version to be released on Tuesday runs to more than 100 pages, but the full report has already gone to the prime minister. The ISC used its powers to read MI5 files about Adebolajo and Adebowale as well as to interview MI5 head Andrew Parker.
The report is understood to find that clues to Adebolajo's increased extremism were visible through his internet use, but this was unknown to MI5. The domestic security service had not assessed him as posing a sufficient danger to require full monitoring.
The ISC report is expected to feed into the debate this week about government plans for the police and security services to have greater powers, particularly online, to fight terrorism and serious and organised crime.
It also comes as Britain's top counter-terrorism police officer, Mark Rowley, launches on Monday a week of events by police aimed at raising public awareness of the threat and urging people to report anyone or anything they think suspicious.
Rowley will say: "The danger posed by violent extremists has evolved. They are no longer a problem solely stemming from countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, far away in the minds of the public. Now, they are home-grown, in our communities, radicalised by images and messages they read on social media and prepared to kill for their cause. The tragic murder of Lee Rigby last year was a stark warning to us all about how real and local the threat is."
After Rigby's murder, several witnesses said Adebolajo had complained of his treatment by the security services. Adebolajo has alleged that there was British complicity in his ill-treatment after he was arrested in Kenya in 2010.
His brother, Jeremiah, who was working at a university in Saudi Arabia, claimed he had also been approached and pressed by MI6 for information.
Among those who say they were not spoken to by the ISC are lawyers for Adebolajo, a friend of his who spoke on television about the alleged harassment and a campaigning group to which Adebolajo complained, as well as his brother.
Adebolajo and Adebowale, both converts to Islam, had been known to the security services for up to eight years before the attack. Adebolajo went to Kenya in 2010, where he was arrested as he attempted to join extremists in Somalia, and was released in murky circumstances to return to the UK.
A friend of his, Abu Nusaybah, later went on television to claim Adebolajo had been tortured in Kenya and harassed by MI5 which asked him to spy for it on his return.
Nusaybah was arrested after making these claims and later convicted of terrorist offences.
After his arrest Nusaybah wrote from his cell to Rifkind: "I believe my arrest was ordered by the intelligence services because I made the information public."
Nusaybah said: "I implore you to investigate any connection between the UK and Kenyan authorities in the mistreatment of Michael Adebolajo … I am witness to the fact that the Michael I knew ceased to exist after his treatment in Kenya."
Nusaybah wrote to Rifkind that he had known Adebolajo since childhood and both attended talks by extremist groups.
Tasnime Akunjee, solicitor for Nusaybah, said: "They are precisely the kind of people you need to speak to.
"The security services spent a huge amount of effort trying to speak to them before they did crazy things the idea you don't speak to them now is nonsensical."
Rifkind told the Guardian there had been a general invitation for evidence: "It has been public knowledge for the last year that we have been conducting this inquiry.
"If anyone is complaining that they have not been involved … they had every opportunity to send evidence to the inquiry. If they did not, that has to be their responsibility."
Sir Malcolm added: "Our inquiry is about the role of the intelligence services in the months before Lee Rigby's murder."
Adebolajo told one organisation, CAGE, that MI5 had knowledge of his torture and of his being threatened with rape while held in Kenya in 2010. Close family members also complained to the campaigning group in April 2012 about the approaches they had received from both MI5 and MI6.
A note taken by a worker at the group who met Adebolajo said he had never "seen someone in such a state of paranoia".
Amandla Thomas-Johnson, of CAGE, said: "The rigour of the report is questionable: why weren't Adebolajo's family questioned? Why wasn't CAGE, who knew the details of his mistreatment in Kenya with alleged British complicity, consulted? This one-sided appeal for yet more state power is hardly worth the paper it is written on and should be rejected."

[Danny Jarman]

A friend of his, Abu Nusaybah, later went on television to claim Adebolajo had been tortured in Kenya and harassed by MI5 which asked him to spy for it on his return.
Nusaybah was arrested after making these claims and later convicted of terrorist offences.
After his arrest Nusaybah wrote from his cell to Rifkind: "I believe my arrest was ordered by the intelligence services because I made the information public."
Nusaybah said: "I implore you to investigate any connection between the UK and Kenyan authorities in the mistreatment of Michael Adebolajo … I am witness to the fact that the Michael I knew ceased to exist after his treatment in Kenya."

So what happened to Adebolajo in prison in Kenya?

Follows the trend of the programmed Manchurian assassins...

[David Guyatt]

Rifkind should be sent to a Kenyan prison and put through the same treatment, if you ask me.

I wait with baited breath (not) the report due out today...

[David Guyatt]

Things ain't what we thought they were. How surprising is that.

It strike me as quite amazing really, how often this sort of fallout seems to occur. There was the Spanish train bombing where one or more of the "terrorists" had contact with the intelligence and/or security service. Then there is the Boston bombing too. And others I can't recall off the top of my noggin at this time of the morning, but which are discussed elsewhere on this forum. Terrorist attacks and prior contact with government types appears to be a fairly common occurrence?

Lee Rigby murder: Were we told the whole truth?



New claims suggest omissions in what MPs were told of plan to recruit young extremist as double agent


JAMIE MERRILL , JANE MERRICK , SERINA SANDHU , MIKE GLOVER

Sunday 30 November 2014

The investigation into Britain's security services and whether they could have prevented the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby was called into question last night.

A 190-page parliamentary report into the role of the intelligence services was dramatically undermined as it emerged that MPs may not have been told the full details of how MI6 tried to recruit one of Rigby's killers as a double agent.
Last week, the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) cleared the security services of blame after suggestions that they could have prevented the killing of the soldier in Woolwich last year. However, security sources close to an operation tracking one of Rigby's killers when he travelled to East Africa in 2010 have cast doubt on the validity of the ISC findings.
Lee Rigby murder
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The revelations also raise serious questions about the accountability of Britain's security services to Parliament at a time when they, with government support, are seeking greater powers to combat the threat from Islamic terror groups.
Michael Adebolajo, together with Michael Adebowale, murdered Rigby, 25, in a brutal attack outside Woolwich barracks, south-east London, in May 2013. MPs on the ISC, the parliamentary watchdog of the secret intelligence services, were told that Adebolajo had been known to them since 2006 after meeting radical Muslim figures and attending extremist meetings. They claimed interest in him waned until they were told he had been arrested in Kenya while trying to get to Somalia to join al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked terror group.
However, an investigation by The Independent on Sunday shows that, contrary to what MPs were told, there is evidence that MI6 planned a complex operation to track him to Kenya and "turn him" in an effort to create a double agent to infiltrate extremist groups in Britain.
Michael Adebolajo in the dock in Kenya in 2010 (AFP/Getty)
A Kenyan source close to the security services confirmed that anti-terror police in Nairobi were "tipped off" by British security services that Adebolajo was travelling to the country. Following his arrival in Nairobi, it is understood MI6 worked with Kenyan counter-terrorism police to arrest him in a snatch operation which was carried out with the help of British special forces operating in Kenya.
Adebolajo was taken from Lamu island, where he was arrested, to Mombasa and subjected to Kenyan police interrogation before an elite specialist anti-terror police unit with links to MI6 questioned him hours later. After these interrogations (it is not clear which) Adebolajo complained he had been tortured. Among those he complained to were British agents who visited him in jail and offered to help get him out of prison and back to Britain where, it was hoped, he would become an MI5 asset. He had been arrested on an "unclear" charge, the ISC found, and the Kenyan police failed to find evidence to charge him with a terrorist offence. He returned to Britain, evidently "of his own volition". However, back in London he refused to co-operate and "just complained about being harassed".
"An awful lot of people were mortified when Rigby was killed," said a well-placed security source. "The plan to recruit Adebolajo to work for our side was based on the hope he was so grateful to get out of Kenyan custody he would be easy to turn [persuade to switch sides]. We didn't know what exactly would happen to him when he was interrogated [in Kenya], and of course we can't be seen to condone anything other than the highest standards. On the other hand, it's always useful to have the intelligence that results from that sort of questioning."
It is unclear why the role of the MI6 in attempting to recruit Adebolajo and the involvement of the SAS, which was first reported last year, were not explored in the ISC report, leading to questions over the watchdog's ability to scrutinise the secretive work of the security services. Committee chairman Sir Malcolm Rifkind was unavailable for comment last night.
Michael Adebolajo brandishes the murder weapons after the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in 2013
Committee member Sir Menzies Campbell would say only: "The evidence relating to Adebolajo's time in Kenya is based entirely on what the committee was told and understood and nothing else." Committee members signed the Official Secrets Act to be allowed to see top-secret police and spy-services files on the surveillance operations on the two suspects. Much of the evidence, presented in the report's narrative, is redacted.
The security services told MPs they had no knowledge that Adebolajo was travelling to Kenya. However, MPs discovered "primary material references which indicated that relevant information might have been available to the agencies prior to the arrest". The information was found in an MI5 file and supported by a second police document indicating a British police counter-terrorism officer in Nairobi was aware of information relating to Adebolajo in advance.
The committee later concluded it was "difficult to understand [MI6's] passive approach" in Adebolajo's questioning, given he was clearly dangerous and had travelled to Kenya to engage in "jihadi tourism". The ISC report found their "apparent lack of interest in Adebolajo's arrest deeply unsatisfactory". The Foreign Office minister responsible for counter-terrorism during the operation was Tory MP Alistair Burt. He said: "I don't talk about any intelligence matters I might have been involved in."
Advisers close to the ISC said that some of its members were frustrated with evidence provided to them. This follows several statements in the report which suggest MPs did not receive full disclosure of information by the security services.
Fusilier Lee Rigby was attacked and killed near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London last year (PA)
It is understood they were particularly concerned at possible contravention of the Government's own rules ("Consolidated Guidance") for the questioning of prisoners and for the avoidance of involvement in torture. The Kenyan counter-terrorism unit which questioned Adebolajo is partly trained and equipped by Britain.
Following his imprisonment in Kenya, Adebolajo told British police that he had been beaten and threatened with electrocution and rape by Kenyan police. The ISC report details how Adebolajo had also been questioned by a counter-terrorism unit known as Arctic, which has "a close working relationship" with the UK government. Human-rights groups have previously linked UK-trained Kenyan counter-terrorism officers with extra-judicial killings and torture. The ISC report censured MI6 for failing to investigate Adebolajo's claims that he was tortured, adding: "If Adebolajo's allegations of mistreatment did refer to his interview by Arctic, then HMG could be said to have had some involvement whether or not UK personnel were present in the room." Last week David Cameron announced an investigation into allegations MI6 might have been complicit in the ill-treatment of Adebolajo while in custody.
Last night, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "Why are we not being told what is being done in our name? Why are there so many holes in the ISC report and how can we have any trust in this process? And yet again government returns to Parliament demanding another blank cheque. MPs must think again."
Tory MP Alistair Burt, the Foreign Office minister responsible for counter-terrorism during the operation
Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the all-party group on extraordinary rendition, said: "From what they have published, it looks as if the ISC has tried very hard to get to the truth. Were there to be any substance to these reports, the ISC may well need to ask further questions on Parliament's behalf. After the 2007 debacle [which cleared the UK of involvement in rendition, subsequently disputed by a high court judge], this would be all the more important."
A government spokesperson said: "The ISC's report is the most open and transparent review ever undertaken into the actions taken by police, security and intelligence agencies. The Government and the agencies co-operated fully and willingly. The report reflects that openness with redactions only where judged absolutely necessary to protect our national security. The published material also demonstrates the Government's total commitment to accountability and transparency in matters relating to the security and intelligence agencies."
Timeline
2006 Michael Adebolajo is arrested with a criminal associate, Ibrahim Hassan, during a protest against cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed. He first comes to the attention of MI5.
2007 He is arrested by police under the Firearms Act for carrying CS spray and it emerges that he has previous arrests for assault.
May-Sept 2008 MI5 opens a surveillance file on him following the high-priority Operation Ash, which was focusing on several terrorist targets. He is also linked to an investigation into the activities of extremist group al-Muhajiroun.
Oct 2008 Operation Ash is closed and Adebolajo's file is transferred to Programme Amazon, a joint operation run by the police and MI5. At some stage during this year MI5 links him to a network trying to acquire "items for a terror attack". The network was disrupted by police with Adebolajo listed as "contact" of the main suspect.
Nov 2010 He is arrested in Kenya in an operation in which a British special forces team was involved.
25 Nov 2010 He is questioned by anti-terror SO15 police officers after his return from Kenya. He is categorised as a "low risk" target.
Spring 2011 After a four-month delay, a file into his activities in Kenya is opened by MI5.
May 2011 MI5 makes an urgent application for further intrusive surveillance of Adebolajo.
Aug 2011 MI5 passes information to the police about his "possible intention to be involved in the London riots".
Late 2011 Following an investigation into a possible attack linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, he is listed as a "high priority" suspect.
May 2012 A technical observation of Adebolajo fails and is not reinstated.
Oct 2012 Surveillance on him is about to be cancelled when new information comes to light suggesting he may be acting as a contact for East Africa-based terrorist group al-Shabaab.
11 Apr 2013 Surveillance on him is cancelled weeks before Fusilier Lee Rigby's murder.
22 May 2013 Adebolajo and his accomplice Michael Adebowale murder Rigby near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich. They are both shot and arrested.
31 May 2013 Adebolajo is released from hospital and taken into police custody.
19 Dec 2013 Along with Adebowale, he is found guilty of murdering Rigby.
26 Feb 2014 Adebolajo is handed a whole-term life sentence, while Adebowale is given a 45-year minimum term.
25 Nov 2014 The Intelligence and Security Committee report on the intelligence relating to the murder of Fusilier Rigby is released.