Woolwich attack: MI5 tried to recruit suspect - claim

MI5 TRIED to recruit one of the suspects in the Woolwich attack six months ago, a childhood friend of the man has claimed.

Abu Nusaybah told the BBC that Michael Adebolajo, 28, was “being harassed” by the security services but refused to join up.

In an interview with Newsnight, Mr Nusaybah said: “His wording was, ‘They are bugging me – they won’t leave me alone.’

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“He mentioned initially they wanted to ask him if he knew certain individuals. But after him saying that he didn’t know these individuals, what he said was they asked him if he would be interested in working for them.

“He was explicit in that he refused to work for them, but he did confirm he didn’t know the individuals.” Mr Nusaybah was arrested at the BBC after giving the interview.

Meanwhile, a former senior intelligence officer has said taking action to prevent the killing of a soldier outside Woolwich Barracks would have been “incredibly hard”.

Richard Barrett, ex-head of counter-terrorism at MI6, said the two suspects believed to have hacked Drummer Lee Rigby to death were unlikely to have had the wider connections that would have caused the security services to investigate them more deeply.

Earlier, Prime Minister David Cameron promised the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which is chaired by former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, would investigate, following the disclosure that the two men were known to MI5.

“I think it is incredibly hard to stop,” Mr Barrett said. “I assume that these people are probably coming out of a small group without necessarily any overseas connections or any other broader connections in the United Kingdom which could come to the attention of the security services more than they did.

“When does a person who expresses radical views, who joins a radical group, flip over to be a violent extremist? To find the signals, the red flags as it were, I think is enormously hard.

“I should imagine that these two people themselves probably didn’t have any intention to commit a crime like this until relatively recently before they did.

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“They must have had some indication that these guys were a problem in order to note their names. But it is one thing to note their names, it is quite another thing to take invasive action to track their movements.”

It emerged the two suspects were known to the security services and police the day after Drummer Rigby, of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was killed.

It is understood neither man had been assessed as a major security risk.

However, reports yesterday claimed that Adebolajo had been arrested seven years ago, after being involved in violent protests by extremists outside the Old Bailey. He was led away in handcuffs after supporting a man on trial for calling for British soldiers to be killed.

Separate footage of an Islamist demonstration in April 2007 showed Adebolajo in a crowd outside Paddington Green police station, with a placard reading Crusade Against Muslims.

Last night, defence analyst Tim Ripley said the security services did not have the resources to put all suspects under “24/7 intensive surveillance”. He went on: “It is clearly a huge task to keep track of all these people.

“Only once the suspect has raised awareness by travelling to a country where jihadi groups have free rein, such as Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Nigeria or Mali, or by contacting a known terrorist suspect, will there be a full panoply of telephone tapping, continuous electronic communications monitoring and, if the threat is judged very high, physical surveillance by teams of agents with cameras and sound recording equipment.”

Yesterday, the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said the government would examine what powers it required following Drummer Rigby’s murder.

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However, he added that he did not believe any measures that were included in a proposed communications data bill – dubbed the “snooper’s charter” for its wide-ranging scope to monitor personal calls and e-mails – would have prevented the death of the soldier in Woolwich.

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