THE devastated stepfather of Lee Rigby has demanded to know what caused his killers to murder the soldier outside Woolwich barracks and said they cannot "hold religion responsible".

Ian Rigby said Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, used the Muslim faith "as an excuse for whatever they've been brainwashed with" after their convictions at the Old Bailey yesterday.

British Muslim converts Adebolajo and Adebowale attacked the father of a young boy - who was wearing a Help For Heroes top - mowing him down with a car before hacking him to death with a meat cleaver and knives outside his barracks in London, in May.

They dumped his body in the road in an event played out on rolling TV news programmes before one of the pair claimed it was revenge for British forces being in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When asked what he would say to the killers, Mr Rigby, who found out about the killing from TV, told ITV News he would want to "know what could possibly be in their brains that could make them do something like this".

He added: "It doesn't make any sense that he was just walking down the road and this happened to him. It could have been anybody. It was two individuals; it wasn't anything to do with relig-ion. Their views are not the Islam views. It's just their private view. You can't hold religion respon-sible. They are using religion as an excuse for whatever they have been brainwashed with."

Mr Rigby and his wife Lyn added that Lee's death had united the country, and that subse-quently many people had come together to defeat the killers' aims of dividing the community.

Mrs Rigby, Fusilier Rigby's widow Rebecca and fiancee Aimee West, wept after the verdicts and Mr Justice Sweeney praised their "great dignity" in sitting through harrowing evidence.

In a statement read out later, they said: "No one should have to go through what we have been through. We are satisfied that justice has been done, but unfortunately no amount of justice will bring Lee back.

"These people have taken him away from us forever but his memory lives on in all of us and we will never forget him."

It said they remained proud of him and the focus was on raising his son Jack.

In court, Adebolajo, a married father of six, kissed the Koran as he left the dock. He and Adebowale will be sentenced in the new year. Adebolajo's brother Jeremiah said the killing was "inevitable" and its justification was "obvious".

Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, who was dubbed the Woolwich Angel after she risked her life to engage the armed men in conversation at the scene, said: "It's very good, a fantastic result. I hope they get the maximum sentence allowed for what they did."

Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism operations, said the attack aimed to divide the UK's communities, adding: "It has had largely the opposite effect."

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "The whole country was completely shocked by the murder and the whole country united in condemnation at what happened."