Two men tried to behead a British soldier in broad daylight on a London street, hacking at his body “like a butcher attacking a joint of meat” in what one said was “eye for an eye” revenge for Britain’s wars against Muslims, a court was told yesterday.
Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, dragged the lifeless body of Fusilier Lee Rigby, a veteran of the Afghan War, into the middle of the street so that horrified members of the public could see what they had done, prosecutor Richard Whittam said at the start of the men’s trial.
They deny committing what Whittam called a “cowardly and callous murder” by knocking Rigby down with a car as he crossed a street in Woolwich, southeast London, on the afternoon of May 22 before setting upon his unconscious body with a meat cleaver and knives.
“He was repeatedly stabbed and it appears it was Michael Adebolajo who made a serious and almost successful attempt to decapitate Lee Rigby with multiple blows to his neck made with the meat cleaver,” Whittam said.
“They had committed a cowardly and callous murder by deliberately attacking an unarmed man in civilian clothes from behind using a vehicle as a weapon,” he added.
The jury of eight women and four men was told Adebolajo, who was carrying a Koran on the day of the attack, had bought a set of five knives and a sharpener the day before. Whittam said it appeared he had picked up Adebowale, who had converted to Islam at 17, on the morning of the killing.
The court fell silent as the jury were shown closed-circuit television footage of the moment the Vauxhall car drove at Rigby. There were gasps in the courtroom as his body was thrown onto the car’s windscreen. Rigby’s family were among those watching, his mother later leaving in tears.
Earlier, the court was shown CCTV footage of Rigby, who held a recruiting post and sometimes worked at the Tower of London, walking through Woolwich where his barracks was based.
Whittam told the court that witness Amanda Bailey had seen the car accelerate into Rigby before carrying him down the road and crashing into a road sign.
The driver then got out carrying the cleaver.
“He knelt down by Lee Rigby and took hold of his hair. He then repeatedly hacked at the right side of his neck just below the jawline,” Whittam said. “He was using considerable force, bringing his hand into the air each time before he struck.”
Witnesses Gary Perkins and Gill Hucks called it a “horrific frenzied attack”, he added. “He (Perkins) saw Michael Adebolajo sawing at the neck of Lee Rigby with a machete and the other man trying to cut bits of the body by hacking away at it,” Whittam said. “He described the actions as being like a butcher attacking a joint of meat.”