Lee Rigby's mother: Justice will not bring him back
The mother of Fusilier Lee Rigby told ITV News that justice will not bring her son back and that a piece of her was lost on the day he was killed on the streets of Woolwich.
Breaking down in tears, Lyn Rigby told presenter Mary Nightingale: "I'll never get Lee back. A piece of me went when Lee went."
She said she watched events unfold in Woolwich on the television on the day of her son's murder and began to panic when she could not contact him.
Describing the devastating moment she realised he had been brutally taken from her, she said: "I was on my way to work and I received a phone call from Sara, my daughter, saying have I heard the news, have I seen the news about a soldier that had been murdered in Woolwich.
"I think I clicked then that it could possibly be Lee. Lee always phoned me if anything had happened to a soldier and he always used to phone to put my mind at rest.
"I went into work and I actually stood there and watched the whole thing and tried to phone Lee.
"I couldn't get hold of Lee. We tried his barracks. His phone would ring and ring. We just couldn't get hold of Lee.
"I was just going up to bed. I put the bedroom light on and the door went and I knew straight away.
"I went to the window and there were four gentlemen in black suits and I started crying then because I knew it was Lee. I opened the door and that was it.
"I don't remember much from there. I just fell onto the couch and everything was just a blur from there."
His distraught stepfather Ian believes the men who murdered Fusilier Rigby are "using religion as an excuse for whatever they've been brainwashed with".
He said: "You want to know what could possibly be in their brains that could make them do something like this.
"Maybe it would make you understand a little bit. It just doesn't make any sense. He was just walking down a road and this happened to him. It could have been anybody.
"It was two individuals. It wasn't anything to do with religion. They are using religion as an excuse for whatever they've been brainwashed with.
"Our justice would be helping to make sure this situation wouldn't happen to another family."
Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale murdered Fusilier Rigby by running him down with a car and then attacking him with a meat cleaver and knives near Woolwich Barracks in south east London on May 22.
During the trial at the Old Bailey Adebolago said his defence to the charge of murder was that he was "a soldier of Allah".
He told the court: "I'm a soldier. I'm a soldier of Allah and I understand that some people might not recognise this because we do not wear fatigues and we do not go to the Brecon Beacons and train and this sort of thing.
"But we are still soldiers in the sight of Allah as a mujahid. This is all that matters, if Allah considers me a soldier, then I am a soldier."
He said he was "doing what Allah commands me to do" and would "never regret obeying the command of Allah".
The pair now face jail for murder.