Bakri’s Facebook page has been publicly available to view for more than a
year. On Saturday night, after being notified of its existence by The
Telegraph, Facebook deleted it.

Under the title “Students of Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad” the page contained
links to his personal website.

On Facebook, Bakri justified the killing of all opponents of the jihadists
fighting in Syria and Iraq.

He said that the “Mujahideen” must kill anyone who does not believe in extreme
Islam “wherever they find them”. He even justified the killing of women and
children if they were sheltering in schools or hospitals.

In a section titled “killing women and children” he said this was usually not
permissible, but stated: “Having said this, one must distinguish between
killing women and children and the Mujahideen fighting the Kuffar
[non-believers] enemies wherever they find them, whether that be in a school
or hospital or elsewhere.”

He also gave religious authority to the killing of Muslims. He said in a video
on Facebook: “Anybody who allies with a taghoot regime [non-Muslims] whether
Sunni or Shi’i has no sanctity and his blood is permissible.” In another
posting, he declared that Jews and Christians were “enemies”, adding: “That
animosity is exposed, clear, explicit, there is no doubt about it.”

The Telegraph previously disclosed how the preacher had called for the
beheading of a British soldier. The plot, in which Bakri was not charged,
led to the arrest of nine suspects who were allegedly planning to kidnap,
torture, and behead a British Muslim soldier, all of which would be
videotaped and later broadcast on the internet.

A few weeks after the plot was uncovered, The Telegraph reported secret
recordings of Bakri in which he said: “When you meet [infidels], slice their
own necks. And when you make the blood spill all over, and the enemy becomes
so tired, now start to take from them prisoners. Then free them or exchange
them until the war is finished.”

Bakri was born to a wealthy Syrian family and moved to Britain in 1986 when he
helped found Al-Muhajiroun, the radical Islamic group.

Adebolajo attended and spoke at Al-Muhajiroun events after joining the group
in 2003. In 2013, Bakri told a newspaper: “I knew him as Michael when he
came to the meetings and then he converted and he became known as Abdullah;
I hear he then started calling himself Mujahid. He asked questions about
religion, he was curious. He had first started coming when there was a lot
of anger about the Iraq war and the war on terror. Whether I influenced him
or not, I do not know. But he was a quiet boy, so something must have
happened.”

Bakri was banned from returning to the UK after taking a trip to Lebanon in
2005, but continued to preach to followers on the internet. In 2010, he was
sentenced to life in prison in Lebanon in a terrorism case that he claimed
to know nothing about, but was subsequently released on bail when witnesses
withdrew their testimony.

Last May, he was arrested again and Nouhad Machnouk, the Lebanese interior
minister, alleged that Bakri “has contributed in every aspect in supporting
terrorism”.

A Facebook spokesman said: “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.”