Australian police investigate 12-year-old terror suspect

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin told the ABC’s 7.30 program he was “shocked” that the boy was on the police radar for such matters, while acknowledging the dramatic drop in the age of terrorism suspects.

A month before Naizmand was arrested in last year’s raids, he managed to slip the police net, using his brother’s passport to fly to the Middle East. He was stopped in Dubai and returned to Australia.

“Yes, the problem is getting worse for Australia, not better”.

The developments come as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull prepares to host a summit on Thursday as part of efforts to counter violent extremism.

Meantime, the Federal Government is preparing to host a high-level counter-terrorism meeting in Canberra on Thursday for an urgent stock take of national security laws in the wake of the Parramatta shooting.

“We have seen this trend of them reaching out to people in their 20s, then their late teens”.

‘Now we find people in their early teens and the government is very shocked about these matters’.

“This threat has evolved, it’s become younger”.

“One tragic irony is that Curtis is a flawless example of how much we gain by maintaining a vibrant, multicultural society that not only welcomes but also embraces newcomers and their contribution – the very values that the terrorists want to frighten us into abandoning”, Mr Baird said.

Mr Keenan declined to say how many children in Australia under the age of 14 were on watch lists.

‘I do not think it is appropriate for me to go into that, ‘ he said.

“You can’t contemplate how this is true…”

It follows growing concerns about the number of young Australians being radicalised following the murder of a police employee by a 15-year-old boy Farhad Jabar.

Australian authorities and political leaders have described Jabar’s execution of Curtis Cheng, a 17-year veteran of the NSW police’s finance unit as an act of terrorism.

The man was arrested in Wentworthville in Sydney’s west last Wednesday following pre-dawn raids in connection to investigations into 15-year-old Farhad Jabar, who gunned down Mr Cheng in Parramatta almost two weeks ago.

Naizmand and other members of the group were detained in Australia’s biggest terrorism raids in September past year over an alleged plot to execute a random member of the public, which was ordered from Syria by Australia’s most senior Islamic State lieutenant, Mohammad Ali Baryalei.

“We will stand together to ensure that the harmony we are so proud of, the harmony that we have experienced in the past, unites us into the future”, Parramatta City Council Lord Mayor Paul Garrad said.