Counter-extremism workers knew boy who plotted Australian Isis attack
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Version 0 of 1. A 15-year-old schoolboy has pleaded guilty to plotting an Islamic State attack on police officers in Australia when he was 14, making him the youngest person in Britain to admit a terrorism offence. The teenager, from north-west England, was on the radar of the government’s counter-extremism programme Channel when he was 13, it can now be reported, following his plea at the Old Bailey. The teenager’s teachers raised the alarm after he made comments at school about Osama bin Laden and his desire to be a martyr. In late 2013 the boy was in contact with workers from Channel, the flagship intervention programme that aims to prevent youngsters being drawn into violent extremism, but the relationship broke down following objections by a family member. Prosecutor Rebecca Ledwidge told a Westminster magistrates court hearing earlier this year that when counter-extremism officers entered the family home “an uncle was obstructive and aggressive, which eventually broke down the opportunity to enrol in this scheme”. Hundreds of young people have been given support under the counter-terrorism programme in recent years, although it is targeted mainly at 15- to 24-year-olds. On 25 March, months after the failed intervention, the boy was arrested, it can now be reported, for making threats to kill at school. When police officers seized his mobile phone they subsequently found he had exchanged thousands of messages with an 18-year-old man in Australia plotting an attack at the Anzac Day memorial in Melbourne that would resemble the murder of Lee Rigby. The plot was to behead a stranger and attack police officers with a machete or firearm at a ceremony on the 25 April public holiday. The boy, who cannot be named because of his age, is said to have communicated with a number of people across the UK about a desire to join Islamic State militants in Syria, Ledwidge told the court hearing in April. This can only now be reported after the teenager pleaded guilty. She told the court that the boy had displayed “erratic behaviour” after his arrest for making threats to kill, setting fires near his home including some that required the intervention of the fire services. “He was interested to test explosives soon,” she said. “He has also researched materials in relation to Syria, Isis and jihad and he has communicated with people about an intent or desire to go to Syria. He’s communicated with a number of people across the country who share that plan.” The boy’s family, who were said to be co-operating fully with police following his arrest, are thought to believe that the 15-year-old may have felt isolated and marginalised after they moved home in 2013. Appearing at the Old Bailey via videolink from Manchester crown court on Thursday, the bespectacled teenager sat alongside his father and listened intently as the judge, Mr Justice Saunders, ordered a pre-sentence review into whether he had been indoctrinated. The court heard that the schoolboy, who was just 14 at the time, used the encrypted messaging app Telegram and exchanged thousands of texts with Sevdet Besim, 18, inciting him to carry out a beheading and an atrocity against police officers at the Anzac Day parade. Paul Greaney QC, prosecuting, said: “Those messages reveal the intentions of the plotters and their targets, along with their motivation – which may be summarised as support for Isis – and their enthusiasm for the attack. The messages also set out the plotters’ preparations for the attack. “On 18 March 2015, as part of those preparations, the defendant sent Sevdet Besim a message that read: ‘Suggest you break into someone’s house and get your first taste of beheading.’ “Sevdet Besim responded to say that this seemed ‘a little risky’ and that aspect of the preparations appears then to have drifted away.” Communications between the pair, published in the Australian media, revealed their intention to target intelligence officers with firearms and “a massive machete”. The British boy suggested that Besim made a video recording of the attack and sent it to an Isis recruiter. He wrote: “You are a lone wolf, a wolf that begs Allah for forgiveness, a wolf that doesn’t fear blame of the blamers. I’m [sic] I right?” Besim allegedly replied: “Pretty much.” The boy also instructed Besim to “start dressing like a Kuffar”, and asked if he was “willing for a bullet to go through you”. During another conversation days later, the British boy told Besim not to underestimate the “difficulty of beheading a person” and advised him: “U gotta be a lion especially that ur doing it in public.” Saunders, who is Britain’s most senior terrorism judge, heard the case without a wig due to the boy’s age. Ordering a pre-sentence report, the judge said: “I want some assessment of how and why it occurred and what measures could be taken in order to reverse that process. “Dealing with someone of this age is an extremely difficult sentencing process and I will need all the help I can get.” The boy, who wore a grey shirt and tie, is being held at an unidentified youth detention centre in the north-west of England. He is due to be sentenced at Manchester crown court on 3 September. |