By Alexis Flynn And Reed Albergotti
LONDON--British intelligence agents should have done more to
monitor two Islamic extremists who later killed a soldier on the
streets of London, a panel of U.K. lawmakers concluded, in a report
that also laid into U.S. Internet companies it said weren't doing
enough to help fight terrorism.
The Intelligence and Security Committee reported its findings
Tuesday after a yearlong investigation into what the intelligence
services knew and whether they could have prevented the
al-Qaeda-inspired murder of 25-year-old Lee Rigby as he returned to
his barracks one afternoon in May 2013.
The panel concluded that British intelligence couldn't have
stopped the attack. But it said that the killing might have been
averted if an online exchange between one of the killers and an
overseas extremist had been revealed to authorities by the internet
company. While the committee didn't name the company, a person
familiar with the matter identified it as Facebook Inc.
Zeroing in on an area of tension between Britain and overseas
Internet firms, the committee's chairman, Malcolm Rifkind, said
U.S. companies weren't proactively monitoring suspicious content
and didn't feel obliged to comply with U.K. warrants, which he said
was a "great concern."
Facebook said it doesn't comment on individual cases but the
company's policies are clear. "We do not allow terrorist content on
the site and take steps to prevent people from using our service
for these purposes," the company said.
Mr. Rifkind also criticized the government's counterterror
strategy more broadly, saying it was failing to prevent large
numbers of people from leaving the U.K. to travel to Syria and Iraq
and needed to do more to root out individuals before they embark on
a process of radicalization.
The 200-page report provides a rare window into the workings of
Britain's secretive intelligence agencies, which are monitoring
several thousand individuals linked to Islamic extremist activities
in the U.K. It also comes at a time when authorities in the U.K.,
the U.S. and elsewhere are warning of an increasing threat from
so-called lone-wolf attacks, or self-radicalized terrorists.
The two attackers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale--both
British citizens of Nigerian descent and Muslim converts-- were
convicted of murder in 2013 and sentenced to life imprisonment this
year.
They drove a car at high speed into Mr. Rigby as he crossed the
street. After the car crashed into a lamppost, the two attackers
exited the car and began to hack at Mr. Rigby with knives before
dragging his body into the middle of the road.
Prior to the attack, the two men had appeared in seven different
intelligence investigations, according to the report.
Mr. Adebolajo, who had been arrested by Kenyan police on
suspicion of fostering links with Somali militant group al-Shabaab
and deported back to the U.K., was a high priority for MI5 during
two operations when significant effort was made to investigate him.
But these investigations didn't reveal any evidence of attack
planning, according to the report.
Mr. Adebowale was never more than a low-level interest to the
authorities. While they were ramping up their investigation of him,
MI5 hadn't received any intelligence that he was planning an
attack, the report found.
Still, the committee found there had been errors in these
operations, such as delays. One important delay occurred in the
submission of an application to use further "intrusive"
investigative methods against Mr. Adebowale. Had the application
been processed more swiftly, the domestic intelligence agency,
known as MI5, would probably have had the monitoring in place
during the days before the attack, the committee said.
The committee said MI5 and the other intelligence agencies
couldn't have changed the outcome. "We have concluded that, given
what the agencies knew at the time, they were not in a position to
prevent the murder of Fusilier Rigby," Mr. Rifkind said.
Prime Minister David Cameron said the report raised significant
areas of concern but that MI5 would provide a detailed report to
the government in the coming months. He added that intelligence
agencies have prevented a number of terrorist plots in recent
years, including four or five serious ones this year.
Mr. Cameron also said that Internet companies have a
responsibility to combat terrorism and that the British government
has raised the issue of communications data with U.S. officials at
every level, "including with the president."
Tech companies say it is difficult to screen all communications
on their systems given the volume and that they need to protect the
privacy of their users.
Mr. Rifkind said the one thing that could have prevented the
attack was if an online conversation between Mr. Adebowale and an
unidentified extremist overseas believed to have links to al-Qaeda
had come to the attention of authorities. In the exchange, which
took place five months before the attack, Mr. Adebowale expresses
his desire to murder a soldier in a graphic manner because of U.K.
involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S.-based Internet company on whose system the
communication took place hadn't been aware of the exchange prior to
the attack. However, it had previously closed some of Mr.
Adebowale's accounts because an automated screen indicated they
were related to terrorist activity. The committee criticized the
company, which it declined to name, for not reviewing those
accounts or alerting authorities that it had closed them.
"Had MI5 had access to this exchange at the time, Adebowale
would have become a top priority," Mr. Rifkind said. "There is then
a significant possibility that MI5 would have been able to prevent
the attack."
Mr. Rifkind said companies generally believe they aren't under
any obligation to notify authorities of such terror-related
material. "However unintentional, they are providing a safe haven
for terrorists," Mr. Rifkind said.
Nicholas Winning and Sam Schechner contributed to this
article.
Write to Alexis Flynn at alexis.flynn@wsj.com and Nicholas
Winning at nick.winning@wsj.com
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