Earlier that day, Nusaybah, whose real name is Ibrahim Hassan, gave an interview to a Mail on Sunday reporter in which he made further claims about MI5 and Adebolajo.
‘They wanted him to spy on a group of Muslims who have links to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). They wanted information about them.’
AQAP, based in Yemen, has been called ‘the most active operational franchise’ of Al Qaeda beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan.
‘They offered him (Adebolajo) money and they gave him a special mobile phone to use when calling them,’ said Hassan. ‘They even took him in for interviews, just to intimidate him to work for them. But he refused.’
By the time Adebolajo arrived in Kenya in 2010, he was already deeply immersed in radical Islam and espousing extremist views.
Along with five Kenyan youths, he was picked up by local police on November 23 after spending the night in a guesthouse on Faza Island, part of the Lamu archipelago in the Indian Ocean close to the Somali border.
Principal magistrate Richard Kirui was told that all six men had been recruited to Al-Shabaab and intended to fight with them to bring down the country’s transitional government.
Al-Shabaab has imposed a strict version of Sharia law in the areas it controls, including stoning to death women accused of adultery.
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