Скачать или смотреть | MI5 tried recruiting London Woolwich suspect!

Woolwich attack: MI5 'offered job to suspect'

Abu Nusaybah: "They (MI5) asked him if he'd be interested in working for them"

MI5 asked Woolwich murder suspect Michael Adebolajo if he wanted to work for them about six months before the killing, a childhood friend has said.

Abu Nusaybah told BBC Newsnight his friend - one of two men arrested after Drummer Lee Rigby's murder in south-east London on Wednesday - had rejected the approach from the security service.

** Abu Nusaybah was arrested at the BBC after giving the interview. **

The Met Police said a 31-year-old man had been arrested at 21:30 BST on Friday in relation to suspected terrorism offences and search warrants were being executed at two homes in east London.

The arrest was not directly related to the murder of Drummer Rigby, it said.

In his Newsnight interview, Abu Nusaybah said that, six months ago, his friend was "basically being harassed by MI5, this is something that he specifically mentioned to me".

He added: "His wording was, 'They are bugging me - they won't leave me alone.'


Michael Adebolajo was filmed after the attack
"He mentioned initially they wanted to ask him if he knew certain individuals.

"But after him saying that he didn't know these individuals, what he said was they asked him if he would be interested in working for them.

"He was explicit in that he refused to work for them but he did confirm he didn't know the individuals."

Mr Adebolajo, 28, originally from Romford, east London, and fellow suspect Michael Adebowale, 22, of Greenwich, south-east London, had been known to MI5 for eight years, Whitehall sources told the BBC on Thursday.

Abu Nusaybah said the approaches followed Mr Adebolajo's detention by security forces on a trip to Kenya late last year.

Abu Nusaybah said his friend suggested he had been physically and sexually abused during an interrogation in a prison cell in the African country.

Video: BBC
________________________________________________

Perhaps it's finally time to think up an ethical foreign policy that doesn't antagonise so many, time for evidence-based strategies to ensure such violence does not return to the streets of the UK.