WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being held at Belmarsh Prison, a notorious jail in southeast London that’s earned the moniker of ‘Britain’s Guantanamo Bay’ as a holding facility for terrorists and other high-profile prisoners. Of interest to Nigerians are the two inmates, Micheal Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale are British of Nigerian descent, were raised as Christians, and converted to Islam.
Both are accused of killing Fusilier Rigby as he returned to Woolwich Barracks on May 22. The father of one died from multiple cuts and stab wounds when he was attacked in Artillery Place.
Rigby was off duty and walking along Wellington Street when he was attacked. Adebolajo and Adebowale ran him down with a car, then used knives and a cleaver to stab and hack him to death. The men dragged Rigby’s body into the road and remained at the scene until police arrived. They told passers-by that they had killed a soldier to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British armed forces.
Unarmed police arrived at the scene nine minutes after an emergency call was received and set up a cordon. Armed police officers arrived five minutes later. The assailants, armed with a cleaver and brandishing a gun, charged at the police, who fired shots that wounded them both. They were apprehended and taken to separate hospitals.
On 19 December 2013, both of the attackers were found guilty of Rigby’s murder. On 26 February 2014, they were sentenced to life imprisonment, with Adebolajo given a whole life order and Adebowale ordered to serve at least 45 years.
The affair had its own controversy, Adebolajo was arrested in Kenya for terrorism, members of his family said he was “pestered” by MI5 agents pressuring him to become an informant for them and infiltrate radical Islamic extremist groups. In 2017, he was said to have converted some of the inmates to Islam, when he confessed in 2018, A source told The Sun: “Adebolajo is widely regarded as one of the most dangerous extremists in the prison system.
“He has never wavered from his beliefs before — which makes this confession all the more remarkable.
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