Schoolgirl, 16, pleads guilty to terror charges after Anzac Day plot

A schoolgirl arrested with a teenage boy involved in a plot to attack police at an Anzac Day parade in Australia has pleaded guilty to two terror offences.

Analysis of her mobile phone found instructions for producing a timed circuit, a document about do-it-yourself (DIY) bomb-making and the “Anarchist Cookbook 2000”.

Officers discovered a chemical recipe in the pad, which the youth claimed was in response to a Blue Peter programme on fireworks.

The teenager, arrested alongside a 14-year-old Lancashire boy in April, pleaded guilty to two offences in the Manchester Magistrates Court.

The girl knew the boy but there is no suggestion she was involved in the alleged Australian terror plot.

The girl used her school’s IT system to search for information on Jihadi John and the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

The girl was allowed bail with certain conditions – she should stay at a particular address, give attendance to police at the interval of three days and should not leave the country or apply for any kind of travel documents. In the girl’s phone, the police also saw some Islamic State images, publications, flags, weapon pictures and photos of terrorist personalities like Osama Bin Laden.

She will be sentenced in October.

“In the end I need to understand why it happened”.

The judge said the girl would get “maximum credit” for her guilty plea but urged her in her own interests to be “open and honest” about her offending when interviewed by the Youth Offending Service.

And photos of a dead child, an execution and people about to be beheaded were recovered.