Lee Rigby’s mother tells of arrest threat over troll’s appeal
THE mother of murdered soldier Lee Rigby said she was threatened with arrest unless she attended the appeal hearing of an internet troll who taunted her over his death.
Lyn Rigby said her treatment by authorities was “absurd and shocking” after she was summoned to a court hearing where a graphic image from her son’s murder featured as evidence.
Mrs Rigby said she was left “trembling from head to foot” when a photo of Islamic extremist Michael Adebolajo, covered in her son’s blood and brandishing a meat cleaver, was shown to the court. “This has been one of the worst weeks since Lee died and it brought all the terrible emotions flooding back to me as if my son had been murdered all over again,” she told the Sunday People.
Conspiracy theorist Christopher Spivey, from Essex, was convicted of harassing the Rigby family and sending grossly offensive messages over social media in 2015.
He had posted a series of online comments about the May 2013 killing in Woolwich, south east London — including claiming that the soldier had never existed and that the story of his murder was a conspiracy. Spivey was eventually found guilty but he escaped being sent to jail when a judge suspended his sentence.
After maintaining his innocence, he launched an appeal which was reportedly dismissed after a four-day hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court, Essex, last week.