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Lee Rigby murder: Adebolajo and Adebowale face sentence | Lee Rigby murder: Adebolajo and Adebowale face sentence |
(35 minutes later) | |
A judge at the Old Bailey is due to sentence the two men who murdered soldier Lee Rigby near Woolwich barracks in south-east London. | A judge at the Old Bailey is due to sentence the two men who murdered soldier Lee Rigby near Woolwich barracks in south-east London. |
Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, drove into Fusilier Rigby with a car before hacking him to death in May last year. | |
Judge Mr Justice Sweeney has heard victim impact statements. | |
Fusilier Rigby's wife Rebecca said her young child would grow up and see images "no son should have to endure". | |
Her statement was one of those from Fusilier Rigby's family, extracts of which were read out by prosecutor Richard Whittam QC. | |
She said about Army life: "When you wave someone off you accept that there is a chance you will never see them again. You do not expect to see this on the streets of the UK." | |
Ian Rigby, Fusilier Rigby's stepfather, said said the family's lives had been " irreparably changed for the worse". | |
He went on: "After all he'd been through in Afghanistan, all Lee was doing was walking through London. After seeing the television, you just can't comprehend it." | |
Adebolajo and Adebowale could face whole-life jail terms after a Court of Appeal ruling last week upheld judges' right to jail the most serious offenders in England and Wales for the rest of their lives. | |
However, counsel for Adebolajo, David Gottlieb, warned an indeterminate sentence "is likely to create a martyr". | |
Mr Gottlieb said Adebolajo is "not so depraved or wicked that he is incapable of redemption", saying the murder "shares the characteristics of a religiously aggravated crime". | |
He said that Adebolajo intended to die and still believed he should be put to death. | |
Adebolajo had claimed he was a "soldier of Allah" and the killing was an act of war. | Adebolajo had claimed he was a "soldier of Allah" and the killing was an act of war. |
Counsel for Michael Adebowale, Abbas Lakha QC, told the court the case was "horrific" but was not a case "where the offending is so exceptionally high that Mr Adebowale must be kept in prison for his life". | |
He said: "The right and proper sentence is one which does leave open the possibility of release in the future. Any other sentence would be inhuman." | |
At the beginning of the hearing the defendants, both dressed in black, were asked to stand, although Adebolajo did not. | |
Fusilier Rigby, from Middleton, Greater Manchester, was murdered as he returned to his barracks in Woolwich, south-east London on 22 May 2013. He died of multiple cut and stab wounds. | |
Adebolajo and Adebowale drove into Fusilier Rigby at 30 to 40mph, before dragging him into the road and attacking him with knives and attempting to decapitate him with a meat cleaver. |