2 Muslim converts guilty in British soldier's killing

LONDON -- Two converts to Islam were found guilty of murdering an off-duty British soldier in a terror attack on a busy London street that transfixed the country.

Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, were found guilty after the jury reviewed the charges for less than two hours yesterday. The men, who face as long as life in prison, will be sentenced at a later date.

Adebolajo and Adebowale ran over soldier Lee Rigby then got out of their car and nearly decapitated the unconscious soldier in a series of assaults with knives and cleavers, prosecutors said during the trial.

"The sickening and barbaric murder of Drummer Lee Rigby united the entire nation in condemnation," Home Secretary Theresa May said in a statement.

Rigby, 25, was attacked just after 2 p.m. on May 22 outside a military barracks in the Woolwich neighborhood of London. Televised images of the bloodshed were transmitted around the world as police called it an act of terror on British soil.

Adebolajo, who has asked to be called Mujaahid Abu Hamza, and Adebowale, who goes by the name of Ismail Ibn Abdullah, were shot, wounded and arrested by police at the scene of the crime.

As the two men were taken back to jail, Adebolajo kissed his copy of the Quran and raised it in the air.

He said during the trial that he considered himself a "brother" of the terror group al-Qaida and told the court that he didn't regret "obeying the command of Allah" in the attack on Rigby.

The murder in May was the first actual, rather than planned, attack in England investigated as a possible act of terrorism since the July 7, 2005, bombings in London.