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| Anzac Day terror plot: Blackburn boy sentenced to life | Anzac Day terror plot: Blackburn boy sentenced to life |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| A 15-year-old British boy who plotted to behead police officers at an Anzac Day parade in Australia has been sentenced to life. | A 15-year-old British boy who plotted to behead police officers at an Anzac Day parade in Australia has been sentenced to life. |
| The Blackburn teen, who the judge ruled will remain anonymous due to his age, will serve at least five years in custody for inciting terrorism. | The Blackburn teen, who the judge ruled will remain anonymous due to his age, will serve at least five years in custody for inciting terrorism. |
| He sent thousands of online messages to an alleged Australian jihadist, and was planning "a massacre", the court heard. | He sent thousands of online messages to an alleged Australian jihadist, and was planning "a massacre", the court heard. |
| He is believed to be the youngest Briton guilty of a terror offence. | He is believed to be the youngest Briton guilty of a terror offence. |
| The plot to murder a number of police officers at the parade in Melbourne earlier this year would "in all probability" have succeeded had British police not cracked the boy's phone and alerted Australian police, the court had heard. | The plot to murder a number of police officers at the parade in Melbourne earlier this year would "in all probability" have succeeded had British police not cracked the boy's phone and alerted Australian police, the court had heard. |
| Anzac Day, held on 25 April each year, commemorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps' World War One battle in Gallipoli, and this year marked its centenary. | Anzac Day, held on 25 April each year, commemorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps' World War One battle in Gallipoli, and this year marked its centenary. |
| Sentencing the teenager, who pleaded guilty to one count of inciting terrorism, judge Mr Justice Saunders said the youth would have "welcomed the notoriety" had the plot succeeded. | |
| The race to stop the teenage terrorist | |
| The teenager - now Britain's youngest convicted terrorist - comes from a "normal" family in Blackburn, Lancashire; he had a "typical relationship" with his mother who would drive him to any appointments. | |
| But the picture that emerged when police searched his bedroom was far from normal. On the windowsill they found a wooden box labelled "Islamic State" in the way a teenager might carve out the name of a pop idol. | |
| But it was what detectives found within encrypted messages that revealed Australia was just days away from experiencing a violent terrorist attack orchestrated by the schoolboy. | |
| Read more: How did a teenager from a "normal" family become Britain's youngest convicted terrorist? | |
| He had been "immersed" in online extremist material and "groomed" by adult extremists who then started using him to carry out their wishes, the judge said at the end of a two-day hearing at Manchester Crown Court. | |
| Mr Justice Saunders said the teenager's life term meant he would not be released until he was considered not to be dangerous. | |
| He said it was "chilling" that someone who was only 14 years old at the time could have become "so radicalised that he was prepared to carry out this role intending and wishing that people should die". | |
| 'Car and knife attack' | |
| The court was previously told that a well-known Islamic State recruiter - Abu Khaled al-Cambodi - had instigated contact between the Lancashire teenager and alleged Australian jihadist Sevdet Besim, 18. | |
| They exchanged more than 3,000 encrypted messages, including one in which the British teen suggested Mr Besim get his "first taste of beheading" by attacking "a proper lonely person", the court heard. | |
| They also made references to making a martyrdom video, prosecutor Paul Greaney QC said. | |
| The court heard that in an exchange on 19 March, the teenager presented Mr Besim with three options - a gun attack on the police, a car attack on the police or a knife attack on the police. | |
| Mr Greaney said: "Mr Besim expressed a preference for a combination of a car and knife attack and [the defendant] advised him to buy a machete and sharpen it, run over a police officer and then decapitate him." |