Who is Michael Adebolajo?

By CNN.com staff

May 24, 2013 -- Updated 1706 GMT (0106 HKT)

Friend of attack suspect speaks to CNN

(CNN) -- British police have arrested four people in relation to the brutal killing of British soldier Lee Rigby in southeast London on Wednesday.

The two men suspected of hitting the 25-year-old machine gunner with a car and then hacking him to death in broad daylight were later shot by police and are being treated for gunshot wounds at separate hospitals.

Another man is being held on "suspicion of conspiracy to murder."

But much of the world's attention has been focused on the suspect who approached a camera brandishing a bloody meat cleaver after the attack and declared: "This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

Friends, acquaintances and British media identified him as 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo, a British national of Nigerian descent.

According to British media reports, Adebolajo was born in Lambeth, London, and grew up in Romford, in the nearby county of Essex.

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The Guardian newspaper reported that he had attended Marshalls Park School, Havering Sixth Form College and then Greenwich University.

Adebolajo is understood to have converted to Islam in about 2003.

His friend of some seven years, Abu Barra said Adebolajo became passionate about his new faith.

The friends shared an extremist philosophy fueled by perceived injustice in Iraq and Afghanistan, Barra told CNN's Dan Rivers.

Barra described his friend as a "very caring" man who "just wanted to help everybody." He was also "very vocal" about his feelings that Muslims were being oppressed -- injustices he pinned, in part, on the British government.

"I wasn't surprised that it happened," Barra said of Wednesday's attack. "... Britain is only responsible, the government. And I believe all of us, as a public, we are responsible. We should condemn ourselves, why we did not do enough to stop these wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan."

British Muslim radical leader Anjem Choudary told CNN that he also knew Adebolajo, who he said had attended demonstrations and a few lectures organized by his group Al-Muhajiroun.

An ITN video from April 2007 shows Adebolajo standing behind Choudary at a rally protesting the arrest of men who allegedly made inflammatory speeches inside a mosque.

Al-Muhajiroun's founder Omar Bakri Mohammed told CNN in an interview from Lebanon that he had also been acquainted with Adebolajo, knowing him by his Muslim name "Muhahid." Bakri said that although they did not have many interactions, Adebolajo stood out because he was a new convert to the religion.

Adebolajo had attended several talks and rallies in London between 2003 and 2004, Bakri said, and had asked several questions about Islam.

"It was on why we don't sit with non-Muslims and how to perform prayer and so on," Bakri told CNN. He said Adebolajo had also raised questions relating to the purpose of life and appeared to feel Islam provided "fundamental answers."

As a Nigerian convert, Adebolajo had been particularly impressed that Islam was a brotherhood between all races "whites, black and Arabs," Bakri said.

He described Adebolajo as "quiet and shy" and highly respectful of him.

All young men in the meetings were angered by the Iraq war and that would have included Adebolajo, Bakri said. He said his view was that Adebolajo's method of attack showed "he really believed he was attacking a military target."

However, a former girlfriend told the Independent Adebolajo had been "really friendly and really polite and there was never anything to suggest he would be caught up with anything like this."

CNN understands spies at the British security service MI5 were aware of Adebolajo and his alleged accomplice while investigating other terrorist plots, but that there was nothing to indicate either men were about to strike.