CHINA TOPIX

11/02/2024 01:26:50 pm

Make CT Your Homepage

Facebook Blamed For Rigby's Death, Family Says Death Of Soldier Might Have Been Evaded

The family of the murdered soldier identified as Lee Rigby has accused the social media giant, Facebook, on Tuesday that they failed to stop the killing of the soldier and that the officials and the staff have "blood in its hands".

According to the family of Rigby, if and when the messages were made known to MI5, the killing could have been prevented. One of the killers of Rigby reportedly conversed with an Al Qaeda extremist on Facebook as they talked about the murder. The message says: 'Let's kill a soldier.'

Like Us on Facebook

However, the staff of Facebook failed to report these graphic and emotive messages from killer Michael Adebowale to MI5. The messages were said to be sent six months before the killing of Rigby.

It has also been found that Facebook already disabled seven accounts of Adebowale, where five of them are flagged due to posts linked to extremism, and the company again failed to mention such important information to the authorities.

According to the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) of the Parliament, if only MI5 knew about the messages, the murder would have been avoided. They also pointed out in their reported that other sites such as Google, Yahoo, Apple, Twitter, and Microsoft should be wary of this as they have become a "haven" for extremists and terrorists to recruit members and to use it for conversations.

David Cameron of the ISC pressed that the above-mentioned companies are actually being used to plot murder and mayhem. He added, "It is their social responsibility to act on this ... we expect them to live up to it."

Another opinion about the situation came from former home secretary Jack Straw. He noted that there is a cultural problem regarding the leadership in the said sites noting that they have a "distorted libertarian ideology" and that they believe they should be wholly detached from any responsibility.

Due to this, a Facebook spokesman released a statement saying, "Like everyone else, we were horrified by the vicious murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby. We don't comment on individual cases but Facebook'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 ISC further criticized MI5 and MI6 in their report pressing that when they tracked the killers of Rigby, Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo, they did not show enough interest that Adebolajo was caught in Kenya and was trying to join the extremists from the terrorist group called Al Shabaab. 

Real Time Analytics