Boy’s Anzac Day terror plot ‘likely to have resulted in deaths’

Sentencing of the teen has begun in the present day.

He was radicalised over the internet by Islamic State propaganda, and formulated the plot “from the bedroom of his parents’ suburban home”, prosecutor Paul Greaney QC said, outlining the case at the start of the hearing.

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 heard Besim was friends with Numan Haider, who he also had met at the centre, the latter known to police and would later be shot by officers after an attack outside the Melbourne police station earlier this year.

Manchester Crown Court heard that the pupil, now aged 15, had previously threatened openly to behead his own teachers.

The youth, who can not be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty in July to inciting terrorism overseas.

Justice John Saunders has set aside two days to sentence the teen in in the Manchester Crown Court.

Communications recovered from the teenager’s phone showed them boning in on Anzac Day.

It led to him moving schools but his poor behaviour continued and more exclusions followed, the court was told.

The defendant was later referred to the government’s counter-extremism programme Channel after his mother explained to the school that he “spent time talking over the internet to persons that he had not met”.

He said the parents of the forthright and outspoken boy had separated in 2014, he had a degenerative eye condition and was not getting on with his teachers at school, all of this prompting him to feel isolated and marginalised.

Justice Saunders will sentence the boy on Friday.

“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 Cambodi which, no doubt, Cambodi meant to use for propaganda purposes”, Mr Greaney said.

Mr Greaney said: “He also spoke of his desire to be a suicide bomber, stating that if he had to choose where to detonate his bomb it would be on a plane in order that he could maximise the fatalities”.

The court heard it was Besim who suggested attacking the Anzac parade and that the British boy would act as his organiser and advisor.

Mr Greaney said: “Shortly after this exchange about Anzac Day, (the defendant) suggested that Besim should “break into someone’s house and get your first taste of beheading”.

On March 24 Besim messaged the defendant: “So far the plan is to run a cop over on the anzac parade & then continue to kill a cop then take ghanimah and run to shahadah?”

The court was told the defendant had subsequently 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”.

The void was filled when he went on his phone and accessed the IS propagandists.

James Pickup QC said: “They welcomed him with open arms and they regarded him as a celebrity”.

The court also heard that the Muslim defendant was “undoubtedly a troubled young person” who had had a “difficult” upbringing and was regularly excluded from school, Mr Greaney said.

“Besim responded to indicate that this seemed rather risky but (the defendant) reassured him that this would only be so if he carried out the killing in the hours before the operation and suggested that the victim should be a “proper lonely person”.