The family of murdered soldier, Lee Rigby, have criticised Facebook for failing to act on the messages organising the attack, although his killers appeared in numerous intelligence investigations.

Facebook have responded to accusations from the soldier’s family claiming that they have ‘blood on their hands’, in relation to the 28-year old’s vicious death in Woolwich, last year.

This has been the response to Facebook’s failure to report on the conversation between the killers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. The duo used the network to discuss their plan to graphically ‘kill a soldier’ months before the brutal attack in May 2013, exposed in a report from the Intelligence and Security Committee that labeled the popular platform a ‘safe haven for terrorists’.

A spokesperson for the social media giant stated, ‘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’. Lee’s stepfather accused Facebook of failing them although there’s a probability that MI5 could have intervened much earlier.

The security service noticed Adebolajo in 2008 in relation to holding equipment for a terrorist attack. It was recommended that he should be monitored but this was never carried out. He had been classed as a subject of low-level interest by 2010, but managed to flee to Africa to join the Islamist group in Somalia unknown to the agency.

David Cameron has declared that £130 million in funding will be provided to improve the agencies’ ability to tackle “self-starting”. He continued by saying that ‘networks are being used to plot murder and mayhem. It is their social responsibility to act on this and we expect them to live up to that responsibility’.

Picture: Matthew Smith