Soldier Killer, Adebolajo bags Life Imprisonment
Michael Adebolajo, a British Soldier killer has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of soldier, Lee Rigby in a London street.
Adebolajo, 29, was given a whole-life tariff while his accomplice Michael Adebowale, 22, was sentenced to life in prison with a 45-year minimum term. A jury had found them guilty in December 2013.
The pair were not in court at the Old Bailey in central London as they were sentenced. They had been removed from the dock shortly beforehand due to shouting protests at the remarks of the judge, Mr Justice Sweeney. They were pinned to the ground by security guards before being removed to the cells.
The struggle in the dock was triggered when the killers, both wearing Islamic robes, reacted angrily to comments that the judge made about their extremist beliefs.
He told them: “You each converted to Islam some years ago. Thereafter you were radicalised and each became an extremist, espousing views which, as has been said elsewhere, are a betrayal of Islam.”
Adebowale protested that this was a lie, and began ranting about America and Britain, and Adebolajo then joined in, screaming “Allahu Akbar”, and hurling abuse at the prison guards who grappled him to the ground.
The judge had delayed sentencing until a court of appeal ruling clarified whether those convicted of the most serious murders could receive sentences meaning that they would never be released.
Outside the court, supporters of the British National party and the English Defence League cheered when the sentences was announced. Many held placards which read: “Restore capital punishment.”
The savagery of the murder in May 2013, in which Rigby, 25, was repeatedly stabbed and hacked in the neck with a cleaver, had a deep effect on community relations.
It was the first murderous attack in Britain by those motivated by the Al-Qaida ideology of violence since the 7 July 2005 bombings of London’s transport system by four suicide bombers. The pair were the first al-Qaida-inspired terrorists to carry out their plan to murder on British soil without killing themselves in the process to come before an English court for sentencing.
At the time of the attack, Rigby was attached to the regimental recruiting team and was on his way back to barracks in Woolwich from a shift working at the Tower of London. Previously he had served a tour of duty in Helmand, Afghanistan, fighting Islamist militants.
After running Rigby down with a car and pulling his body into the road, mutilating him so badly that he had to be identified by dental records, they remained at the scene and encouraged people to take pictures with their mobile phone cameras.
They claimed they were soldiers of Allah and driven to conduct a strike against the west because of their disgust at its foreign policy.
Adebolajo, assessed by a psychiatrist as sane, was recorded at the scene brandishing a cleaver and a knife in his bloodied hands, and with the body of Rigby lying metres away, saying:
“We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
In a police interview, he said he had picked Rigby because he was the first soldier they saw. The fusilier was stabbed with weapons including knives bought from Argos the day before. He claimed he slashed his neck because it was the most humane way to kill someone and added: “So I struck at the neck and attempted to remove the head.”
Adebolajo told jurors that he was a “soldier of Allah” and was obliged to obey the command of Allah. He described how he held the soldier’s hair as he hacked at his 
neck in a motion described by one witness as like a “butcher attacking a joint of meat”.
After the conviction last December, Mr Justice Sweeney said he would pass sentence after a key ruling by the court of appeal on the use of whole-life terms. It was a clear signal that he was considering sentencing the men to die in jail.
Adebolajo, from Romford, and Adebowale, from Greenwich, are both from Christian Nigerian families and had attended events by extremist groups led by Anjem Choudary, linked to the now-banned al-Muhajiroun. Adebowale was attending events last year while Adebolajo had led rallies several years ago.
