In the aftermath of the gruesome slaughtering of British soldier Lee James Rigby on Wednesday, reports have emerged that one of the suspects was already under the scanner of intelligence services.
Michael Adebolajo of Nigerian origin was caught clashing with the police in Old Bailey in 2006, during a mass protest against British soldiers.
And since then the security services had been keeping a track of him and Michael Adebowale, the second accused in the gruesome killing. But even then the intelligence failed to oversee the activities of the two men.
"For the last three weeks he had been walking up and down the main street shouting and preaching. It was an obvious sign there was a mad man walking around," Mayur Patel, a local told leading British daily.
Adebolajo reportedly turned to Islam and adopted the name 'Mujahid' which translates to fighter for Islam.
He was influenced by radical Islamic extremism and the preachings of Anjeem Choudhary, a Muslim cleric who led the banned Islamist group al-Muhajiroun.
Another cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, who helped Adebolajo convert to Islam, justified the killing as 'courageous'.
"I saw the film and we could see that he [the suspect] was being very courageous," He told Independent from Lebanon.
"Under Islam this can be justified, he was not targeting civilians, he was taking on a military man in an operation. To people around here [in the Middle East] he is a hero for what he has done."
Meanwhile, protests have been raised against the secret services for not taking action against the two accused before Wednesday's killing. The British media even sought for the arrest of Anjeem Choudahary, the Islamist preacher, for radical ideas in youth.
Popular tabloid, The Sun, described Choudhary as the "epicentre of evil" and said he should be jailed at the earliest.
"Most disturbing of all is the way hate-peddlers like Choudary are allowed to deliver their sermons of murder with such impunity," read an editorial in Daily Mail.
The only hero to come out the incident is Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, a 48-year-old mother who had come forward to talk to the accused in hopes to ease the situation.
Her noble and brave act was praised British Prime Minister David Cameron. "Confronting extremism is a job for us all. And the fact that our communities will unite in doing this was vividly demonstrated by the brave Cub pack leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, who confronted one of the attackers on the streets of Woolwich," he said in a statement.
