A 14-year-old British boy came within days of successfully plotting an Anzac Day terror “massacre” in Australia after he was radicalised by online Islamic State propaganda, a court has heard.
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“He did so with an alleged Australian jihadist named Sevdet Besim, who we suggest used the online name “Illyas”.
Investigators allege they uncovered the plot after discovering the boy’s texts on his smart phone.
In one message on 18 March, the boy said: “I suggest you break into someone’s house and get your first taste of beheading”.
The teen, who was 14 at the time of the offences and of Bangladeshi origin, is believed to be Britain’s youngest convicted terrorist.
He said their intention was that “police officers should be murdered by beheading” with the aim of promoting the ideology and agenda of IS.
The court was told the boy had been disruptive at school, where he had threatened to behead his teachers and was known as “the terrorist” by students because of his interest in radical Islamic extremism.
A plot by a Blackburn teenager to attack an Anzac Day parade in Australia would “in all probability” have caused a number of deaths if it had not been stopped, a court has heard.
The judge had previously adjourned the case to find out if there had been “indoctrination” of the youngster.
Mr Greaney said by March this year teachers were “increasingly concerned for their own personal safety and the evidence of [the defendant’s] radicalisation was overwhelming”.
The boy urged the Melbourne man to make sure he was killed by police throughout his assault to realize martyrdom.
But it has emerged that the boy, who can not be named for legal reasons, had been radicalised and recruited online by Australian Isil fanatic Abu Khaled al-Cambodi.
The well dressed and bespectacled teenager sat watching the proceedings from the dock, flanked by his mother and father.
While there he threatened a male teacher on “many occasions” and on one date he said he would “cut his throat and watch him bleed to death”.
Today, Mr justice Saunders will begin sentencing the 15 year old for inciting another person to commit an act of terror, partly or wholly, outside the UK.
“There is no doubt that there was a determination on the part of the defendant and Sevdet Besim that the plot should be carried through and the contact between the two included frequent references to the production of a martyrdom video by Besim for al-Cambodi which, no doubt, al-Cambodi meant to use for propaganda purposes”.
The court was told the defendant had since told a psychiatrist in custody that he was convinced that if the police had not disrupted his activities “a massacre would have occurred” and in this way he thought he “would become notorious”.
Among the reams of messages were instructions on how to “tear” someone’s throat with a machete and musings of running over members of the public with an ISIS flag on the bonnet then decapitating a police officer and placing the head “a few metres away from his body”.
The prosecution told the court a major terrorist plot had been thwarted.
Mr Pickup said his client was not now or should not now be considered risky.
The barrister said that the “void that was filled by the extremist propaganda of Isis no longer exists”.
He said: “He wasn’t rejected”.
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Just two weeks after creating a Twitter account and posting extremist messages, he had 24,000 followers and “quickly became a celebrity” among the jihadi community, defence lawyer James Pickup QC said.
