Fifteen-year-old sentenced to detention for life for planning attack on Australia and New Zealand remembrance parade

A British teenager, thought to be the UK’s youngest convicted terrorist, has been sentenced to life, with at least five years detention, for plotting an Anzac Day “massacre” in Australia when he was just 14.

Sentencing, Mr Justice Saunders said it was chilling that a defendant so young had been “hoping and intending that the outcome would be the deaths of a number of people”.

The boy, from Blackburn, Lancashire, was the organiser and adviser of a plot to behead Australian police officers on Anzac Day.

The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty at Manchester crown court in July to inciting terrorism overseas. It emerged during the trial that the teenager sent thousands of online messages to contacts in Australia.

The judge said the defendant would not be released until he was considered not to be dangerous. “Thanks to the intervention of the police in this country and in Australia, that attack and the deaths which were intended to follow never happened,” he said.

“Had the authorities not intervened, [the defendant] would have continued to play his part hoping and intending that the outcome would be the deaths of a number of people.

“In March 2015 he would have been pleased if that had happened. He would have welcomed the notoriety that he would have achieved.

“The revelation in this case that someone of only 14 could have become so radicalised that he was prepared to carry out this role intending and wishing that people should die is chilling.”

The teenager hugged his parents and family members after sentence was passed down before he was led from the courtroom.

Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Mole, head of the North West Counter Terrorism Unit, said he found it “sad and shocking” that such a young boy could be radicalised to the point where he incited a terror attack.



“It is a warning to teenagers. The seduction of this Isil message ... it can be very compelling. Once you get into the internet I have a theory that you can almost self-radicalise because what you will do you will go deeper and deeper,” he said

Parents should attempt to understand the “online footprints” of their children, such the websites, apps and conversations they were engaging in, he said. “Is your kid up at three o’clock in the morning on social media? I think you have got some questions as a parent if you find that is happening.”

He added: “I encourage parents to be quite nosy with their children. It is difficult but you need to engage with your kids, especially if you have got concerns. And you might need help. You might not be able to solve it yourself and there is help out there. What we don’t want is to be getting into the space we are in here.”



At the sentencing hearing on Thursday, the court heard that the defendant was radicalised by an online jihadi community, accessed via his first smartphone, which prosecutors said had filled a void caused by problems at school and at home, as well as a degenerative eye condition.

He became a celebrity of the online jihadi community, operating 89 Twitter accounts and attracting 24,000 followers within a fortnight.

Paul Greaney QC, prosecuting, told the court it was “a plot that would in all probability have resulted in a number of deaths.”

The teenager was arrested on 25 March after concerns were raised by his school about his extreme behaviour, where classmates had nicknamed him “the terrorist”.

Mr Justice Saunders said the day of the planned attack was chosen because of “its importance to Australia and its people” when those who have died in conflict are honoured. He said: “It was the day when the killings would have the greatest impact. The victims were to be police officers who were to be killed either with a car or by being beheaded.”

The judge said a considerable amount of expertise had gone into explaining how and why the teenager became so radicalised. “It appears he felt isolated in terms of his education and home life. There was a vacuum in his life which he filled with religious extremism.”

The judge described how the teenager’s behaviour had changed gradually over three years, but most markedly in 2014 when he had begun accessing extreme material.

“He communicated with extremist propagandists who either worked for Isis or supported their aims over the internet,” Mr Justice Saunders said. “They were experienced recruiters who were keen to enlist young impressionable Muslims to the cause.”

Those who groomed the defendant had succeeded in “turning him into a deeply committed radical extremist,” the judge continued.

Lessons could be learned from the way the teenager paid lip service to de-radicalisation programmes like Channel, the judge concluded. “But there is no material before me from which blame should be attributed to anyone, except those extremists who were prepared to use the internet to encourage extreme views in a boy of 14 and then use him to carry out terrorist acts.”

The defendant was said to have made considerable progress at the detention centre where he is being held but the author of the teenager’s pre-sentence report concluded he still presents a high risk of serious harm to the public.

“I acknowledge the progress and encourage the work done by [the defendant] and others but I have no doubt a significant risk remains,” the judge said, adding that there was no certainty on how long de-radicalisation would take.

“I very much hope that the risk will have been removed in five years and he can be released and realise his considerable potential in society,” he concluded.



