A man accused of killing a British soldier in London appeared in court to confirm his name, address and date of birth.
Michael Adebowale, 22, was handcuffed during the brief appearance yesterday. He was allowed to sit down while giving information because he is still recovering from being shot by British police.
He is one of two men suspected of attacking Lee Rigby. The other, 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo, remains hospitalized and has not been charged.
Photo: EPA
The daylight attack on Rigby by two men wielding knives and meat cleavers has raised tensions in Britain. It is being seen as a possible terror attack by Muslim extremists.
Security was extremely tight for Adebowale’s first court appearance.
He is scheduled to be back in court on Monday for another hearing and remains in custody.
Meanwhile, a Kenyan lawyer who represented Michael Adebolajo in 2010 after he was arrested in Kenya for allegedly trying to join an Islamist militant group said on Wednesday that he was freed from arrest three years ago on the recommendation of the British High Commission.
Britain’s authorities face questions about what they knew about the activities of the two Britons of Nigerian descent suspected of butchering Lee Rigby, a 25-year-old veteran of the Afghan war, in broad daylight on a London street.
The two men said they killed Rigby in the name of Islam.
Wycliffe Makasembo, who was the lawyer for Adebolajo at the time of his 2010 arrest in the tourist town of Lamu, said Kenyan anti-terrorism police detained him and six others when they tried to travel north to Somalia in a speedboat.
They were suspected of attempting to go to train with the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia, and were presented in a court in Mombasa, south of Lamu.
Makasembo told reporters that Kenyan police at the time sought more information about Adebolajo, a 28-year-old British-born convert from a Christian Nigerian family, from the British High Commission in Nairobi.
He added the British diplomatic mission replied in a letter to the police that “gave a clean bill of health that Michael Adebolajo had no criminal record or any connection with any criminal or terrorist organization in the world.”
“Our own intelligence in Kenya were reluctant to release him, but it is the British High Commission which recommended that the suspect be released,” Makasembo said, adding he had seen the letter at the time of the court appearance.
Adebolajo was deported back to Britain and the other six, all Kenyans, were released without charge.
Asked about the Kenyan lawyer’s remarks, a spokesman for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London on Wednesday declined to comment on them specifically.
“We can confirm that a British national was arrested in Kenya in 2010 and the FCO provided consular assistance as normal for British nationals,” the spokesman said.
Sources close to the investigation have told Reuters the attackers were known to Britain’s MI5 internal security service.
Adebolajo had handed out radical Islamist pamphlets, but neither of the two men was considered a serious threat, sources said.
Britain’s ITV News channel reported that Adebolajo — who went by the nickname Mujahid, or warrior, after taking up Islam as a teenager — and his family were approached by security services MI5 and MI6 who tried to recruit him as an informant.
Makasembo said Kenya was “not to blame” for the London killing.
“It is the British themselves who defended him [Adebolajo] from our law enforcers... Had he been charged here, the killing of the British soldier would never have occurred,” he said.
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