LONDON (AP) — Two al-Qaida-inspired extremists who killed a British soldier on a London street had been under scrutiny by Britain’s intelligence services but those agencies didn’t know that one had expressed a desire online to kill a soldier, lawmakers said Tuesday.
Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee said in an extensive report that if British spies had known of Michael Adebowale’s online declaration “there is a significant possibility” they could have prevented the May 2013 murder.
But his online exchange with an extremist overseas was only discovered after Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo killed Fusilier Lee Rigby in a brazen daylight attack.
The committee report criticized U.S.-based companies such as Google, Twitter and Yahoo for failing to report extremist content or comply with requests from British agencies to hand over information.
It said an unnamed U.S. Internet firm had not provided information about the online exchange, prompting Prime Minister David Cameron to call for online companies to cooperate more fully.
“Terrorists are using the Internet to communicate with each other and we must not accept that these communications are beyond the reach of the authorities,” Cameron said Tuesday in Parliament.
He said the firms’ online networks “are being used to plot murder and mayhem” and that Internet providers have a “social responsibility” to avoid being used for terrorist communications.
The British lawmakers concluded that spy agencies had made mistakes, but they “were not in a position to prevent the murder” with the knowledge they had at the time.
The committee said the two men had shown up on spy agencies’ radar in seven different investigations and in two of them Adebolajo had been labelled a “high priority.”
Adebolajo was arrested in Kenya in 2010; authorities said he was trying to travel to Somalia to join the militant group al-Shabab.
The committee was critical of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, MI6, for waiting four months before opening an investigation into Adebolajo after he returned.
Adebolajo and Adebowale are serving life sentences for the murder of 25-year-old Rigby.
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