The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that Michael Adebolajo was held by police close to the Somali border with a band of “radicalised” Muslim youths who wanted to join the notorious al-Shabaab group.
He was deported to Britain after he appeared in court in Mombasa in November 2010.
Two months previously the head of MI5 had warned that Britons were training in Somalia and it was “only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside al-Shabaab”. It also emerged that the other suspect in the soldier’s murder, Michael Adebowale, 22, was detained by police in London two months ago after shopkeepers complained about a group of Muslim activists.
The disclosures raise further questions about the monitoring by the security services of Adebowale and Adebolajo, 28, whom sources have said was known to MI5 but not assessed as a “threat to life”.
Þ On Saturday night three further men – aged 21, 24 and 28 – were arrested in south east London on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. Police used tasers to detain two of them and were searching four residential addresses;
ÞCalls were made for Anjem Choudary, the leader of the al-Muhajiroun group to which Adebolajo has been closely linked, to be subject to a Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measure, the successor to control orders;
ÞEric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, uses an article in The Sunday Telegraph to warn public bodies, including the police and judges, that it is time for them to bring the full weight of the law to bear on extremists and not be hampered by political correctness;
ÞA leading historian who was a member of a Whitehall panel intended to tackle extremist Muslim preaching at universities told how officials opened a “dialogue” with a body that seemed to endorse aspects of extremism;
ÞIn what was feared to be a copycat attack in Paris last night, a uniformed soldier was knifed in the throat by a man said to be “bearded and of North African origin”. The soldier was “badly hurt” in the attack, according to police who said they were treating it as a terrorist incident;
ÞThe father of Damilola Taylor, the boy murdered in 2000 in south-east London, told how he had mentored Adebowale before the former gang member turned to radical Islam.
A report on MI5 and MI6’s knowledge of and assessment of the two suspects will be given this week to MPs on the parliamentary committee that scrutinises the security services. The Sunday Telegraphhas established that Adebolajo was arrested by Kenyan authorities in the coastal town of Lamu, before being taken to Mombasa, where he was detained. He appeared in court in late November 2010 alongside other alleged Islamists. He and the others, who were said to age from 18 to 22, were remanded to a local police station.
A court report at the time said he was a “Nigerian who had a British passport” and spelt his name incorrectly. Sources in the country confirmed his identity yesterday and said Adebolajo was subsequently deported. He later complained that he had been mistreated.
Adebolajo is understood to have said in court that he wanted access to legal services and to talk to the British Ambassador to Kenya. He also complained that the police had told him he was a Christian, when he was a converted Muslim.
“He was very arrogant, he was restrained and handcuffed very well,” the source said. “We deported him back to the UK. When he was back in the UK he complained about us, that we tortured him. The British embassy in Nairobi wrote to us about the complaint, we told them that we did not torture him. I do not know if the letter arrived but that was what we wrote to them.”
According to newspaper reports at the time, the group boarded a speedboat from Lamu Island to the village of Kizingitini before their arrest. Police suspected Adebolajo of masterminding a plan for the youths to join al-Shabaab in Somalia. Pamphlets connected with al-Shabaab were recovered during the police operation. The other youths who appeared with Adebolajo said they were recruited from a mosque in Mombasa by a radical imam. While in Lamu, they spent time at an isolated madrassa. Lamu, 68 miles from the Somali border, is considered the key crossing point to the country and is a major area of operations for Kenyan security forces.
The case raises questions about why Adebolajo was not put under greater surveillance or even prosecuted after his deportation from Kenya. Under the Terrorism Act 2006, it is an offence to travel or intend to travel overseas to commit acts of terrorism or take part in terrorist training.
Evidence from the Kenyan authorities could have been used in the UK to prosecute Adebolajo.
Several Britons have been convicted of similar offences, including the white Muslim convert Richard Dart and his co-defendants earlier this year. They admitted planning to travel to Pakistan to seek terrorist training, and had discussed attacking the military-supporting town of Royal Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire.
Kenyan police believe that Jermaine Grant, a Briton who is on trial in Mombasa on charges of possessing explosives and planning an attack in the port city, has links to al-Shabaab.
Grant’s alleged accomplice Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of the 7/7 King’s Cross bomber Germaine Lindsay, is on the run after slipping a police dragnet. Some reports suggest she may have crossed the border into Somalia.
Jonathan Evans, the then head of MI5, warned in September 2010 that a “significant number of UK residents” were training with al-Shabaab. At the time security services said Somalia was the most significant destination for foreign jihadis. The Foreign Office said of Adebolajo’s arrest and deportation: “We do not comment on individual cases.”
The arrest of the other suspect, Adebowale, two months ago in London, followed complaints from shopkeepers about the activities of extremist Muslims, sources said.
More details of his life were disclosed by Damilola Taylor’s father, Richard, who recalled how he tried to mentor the suspect when he was younger.
Mr Taylor is Nigerian-born while both suspects are of Nigerian descent. He said: “He [Adebowale] was a young lovable boy, quiet. Suddenly I started hearing that he’s getting involved in issues around gangs and drugs and I was not very happy with that. I’m terribly shocked.”
The murder of Drummer Rigby has caused concern on several levels across Whitehall, highlighting apparent failures to rein in extremist preaching and the radicalisation of young Muslim men. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph today, Mr Pickles urges politicians, judges and the public sector to take a robust line against extremists.
“Our laws are there to ensure preachers of hate are not given a licence to incite violence or public disorder,” he writes. “And the police and judiciary should use their powers when the line has been crossed.”
He urges members of the public not to “stand idly by” and for broadcasters not to give fanatics the oxygen of publicity. Local authorities should not give taxpayers’ money to organisations that promote segregation or shelter extremists, he adds.
A senior academic who advised the Government on combating Muslim extremism in British universities today condemns the showpiece counter-terrorism strategy as a “sad shambles”. Professor Michael Burleigh, a research fellow in modern history and the history of terrorism at Buckingham University, was invited to take part in a Home Office and Department for Business advisory group two years ago, which helped update the £63 million-a-year “Prevent” strategy.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph today, Prof Burleigh says civil servants in charge of the “entrenched bureaucracy” worked to undermine the experts and even met with one Islamic group that he regarded as “the main problem”.
Prevent was set up under the Labour government in 2005 after the London bombings of July 7.
After the last general election, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, commissioned a review because she regarded it as highly flawed, and was critical of the higher education sector’s “complacency” in dealing with the Islamists on campus.
She later admitted that Prevent had handed taxpayers’ money to hard-line Muslim groups that promote extremist views.
One senior counter-terrorism source said: “Would a university allow someone to speak on campus if they were advocating the best way to be a paedophile or an armed robber? No, they would not. But they allow speakers who advocate terrorism.”
Greenwich University last night began an investigation into radicalism on its premises after confirming that the older suspect had been a student there.
Research by Student Rights, a group set up to tackle extremism on campus, found that radical Islamist preachers addressed students at 200 official events in the 12 months to March 2013, including at Greenwich.
In February its Islamic society invited Dr Khalid Fikry, who has given speeches in which he appears to suggest that Shia Muslims believe “raping a Sunni woman is a matter that pleases Allah” and stated that “Shia are one of the worst and greatest enemies of our Ummah (community) nowadays”. Most recently he spoke at the University of Westminster’s Islamic Society.
University Islamic societies are grouped under the umbrella of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS). It has hosted extremist speakers including Azzam Tamimi, who supports the Palestinian group Hamas and has spoken in support of martyrdom, and Haitham al-Haddad, who believes that music is a “prohibited and fake message of love and peace”.
FOSIS has been criticised by Mrs May and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, for its failure to “fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology”.
Its chairman, Omar Ali, said last night: “There has been no investigation or inquiry that has identified a link between the activities of Islamic Societies and acts of terrorism. There’s no evidence to suggest there is more extremism on university campuses than in any other sector of society.”
The murder in Woolwich, south-east London, has led to calls for internet companies to take down extremist material from the web, but those were rejected by Google.
Speaking at the Telegraph Hay Festival yesterday, Eric Schmidt, its executive chairman, said the company had no plans to change its policy.
“We cannot prima facie identify it and take it down. It establishes censorship as a slippery slope; where do we stop?” he said.
By Zoe Flood in Nairobi,
