“I love Al Qaeda, they are my brothers” – Michael Adebolajo declares during Woolwich trial

One of the men accused of murdering soldier Lee Rigby loves Al Qaeda and says members of the terrorist group are ‘his brothers’, the Old Bailey heard today.
Michael Adebolajo, 28, began giving evidence surrounded by five security guards and told the jury his ‘religion is everything’ and he hoped to be accepted into Paradise as a martyr.
He and Michael Adebowale, 22, are accused of murdering Fusilier Rigby by running him down with a car and then hacking him to death with a meat cleaver and knives near Woolwich Barracks in south east London on May 22.
Adebolajo today denied murder on the grounds he is a ‘soldier of Allah’, with the soldier’s relatives sat feet away.

Woolwich trial: Michael Adebolajo was in the dock today where he said he loved Al Qaeda and said he is denying the murder of Lee Rigby because ‘I’m a soldier of Allah’

 

Asked who Al Qaeda were by his counsel, David Gottlieb, Adebolajo replied: ‘Al Qaeda, I consider to be Mujahideen. I love them, they’re my brothers. I have never met them. I consider them my brothers in Islam.’
He added: ‘Mujahideen are the army of Allah.’
He went on: ‘My religion is everything.
‘When I came to Islam I realised that… real success is not just what you can acquire, but really is if you make it to paradise, because then you can relax.’
Adebolajo said he converted to Islam in his first year at Greenwich University.
When asked about his attitude to people in authority, he said: ‘Generally speaking, I don’t get along with them, generally. In most instances I don’t get along with authority, except for my mother and my father.’

Victim: The alleged killers of Lee Rigby cut his throat because it was ‘humane’, a court has heard

As ground rules were set out for his giving evidence, including not speaking over the judge, he said: ‘I don’t believe in the law.’

Testimony: Giving evidence for the first time Michael Adebolajo said he loved Al Qaeda and said its members were his ‘brothers’

 

The court heard that Adebolajo is married and has six children, including a seven-year-old boy.
He said that, growing up in Romford, the ‘vast majority’ of his friends were white British, and one, Kirk Redpath, joined the Army and was later killed in Iraq by an IED.
Adebolajo said: ‘I hold Tony Blair responsible for his death.’
The 28-year-old was raised as a Christian.
He told the jury of eight women and four men: ‘My parents used to take us to church every Sunday. The memory that sticks in my mind… is probably every New Year’s Eve in the evening around 11 o’clock we would gather around in candlelight and read passages from the Bible.’
Adebolajo told the court that he took the name Mujahid, meaning fighter, in 2002 or 2003.
‘Growing up I never did think of killing a man. This is not the type of thing that the average child thinks of and I was no different.
‘When a soldier joins the Army he perhaps has in his head an understanding that he will kill a man at some stage. When I became a mujahid I was aware that perhaps I might end up killing a soldier.’
In 2010 he tried to travel to Somalia but was captured in Kenya and brought back to the UK.
Adebolajo said: ‘There’s a lot more to the story but I won’t mention that.’
He told the jury that he and Adebowale prayed to Allah that they would attack a soldier and not a civilian.
‘To be 100 per cent, I don’t believe there’s a way to know 100 per cent that was a soldier, however there were some steps that we took. For example before we started out on that day and the night previous to that I started worshipping Allah and begging him that … we strike a soldier and a soldier only.’

Background: Adebolajo, 28, pictured in a police interview, said today he was brought up as a Christian but became a Muslim when a student at Greenwich University

 

Trial: The Old Bailey heard Michael Adebolajo, left,, sketched with alleged accomplice Michael Adebowale, right, murdered because because ‘British soldiers were killing Muslims in the Middle East’

Adebolajo earlier told the jury that he used to attend demonstrations ‘in the hope it might make a difference’.
He added: ‘I was somewhat naive.’
Adebolajo told the court that at one demonstration he was arrested and sent to prison.
He said that in his cell he realised the demonstrations were ‘impotent rage’.
‘In reality, no demonstration will make a difference,’ he added.
Adebolajo said that, while he was not a member of any group, the demonstrations were organised by al-Muhajiroun, which Mr Gottlieb told the jury that the group was proscribed under the UK Terrorism Act.
Adebolajo discussed Anjem Choudary and said he thought he was a ‘good man’ but he disagreed with some of his views.
Adebolajo said he handed a letter to an eyewitness to make it clear that the events happened ‘for one reason and one reason only – that’s foreign policy’.
He said: ‘The life of this one soldier might save the lives of many, many people, not just from Muslim lands but from this country.’

Victim: Lee Rigby was run down by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale in this Tigra after they had circled the area for a victim, the Old Bailey has heard

 

Adebolajo said he asked people at the scene at Woolwich Barracks to film him to ‘make it clear to everybody why the soldier lost his life’ and ‘how this can be avoided in the future’.

Adebolajo told the jury that having a wife and children was not an excuse not to fight.
He said ‘Allah might throw me in the hellfire’ if he did not fight for this reason.

Read more: Daily Mail

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