With Wednesday's bloody attack on a British soldier -- now identified as 25-year-old Lee Rigby -- still on the minds of people the world over, officials share that they have reason to believe there could be copycat attacks taking place.
The two men arrested in the violent murder of the British soldier and military drummer, Michael Adebowale, 22, and Michael Adebolajo, 28, are of Nigerian decent but claim citizenship in Britain, according to reports.
Both are being held at an area hospital for gunshot wounds received by police at the scene of the crime earlier this week.
A former United Nations coordinator for the al-Qaeda and Taliban monitoring team, Richard Barrett, said the two men that carried out the hacking death of Rigby were copycats themselves and were inspired by the brother duo behind the Boston Marathon Bombing.
"The way...they were hanging about and wanting to be arrested...[explains] what they were doing" and fits a pattern of sought after fame, he said.
Police are preparing for more troubled minds to surface and carry out amateur attacks by adding more than 1,000-armed response units to areas of concern.
Not all of Britain's police carry firearms.
"We can see the tempo being raised," anti-extremist official Maajid Nawaz said.
Nawaz is a former jihadist and now works with a London-based anti-extremist organization known as the Quilliam Foundation.
"One of the reasons why these guys acted in this theatrical way was because of the propaganda effect so others would be inspired to do the same thing," he said. "The nature of these attacks are that they are so easy to do, and we have definitely seen an increase in chatter calling for such things since the attack."
Currently, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told the Press Association that a special team of counterterrorism officers are leading the investigation of this week's horrific murder.
© 2025 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
