Teen jailed for inciting terrorist attack on Anzac Day parade

He is accused of sending thousands of online messages to 18-year-old Australian Sevdet Besim, detailing him how to plot against Australian police officers during the parade. The judge who issued the sentence, Mr Justice Saunders, said that the British teenager had “filled a void” created by a serious eye condition and an unhappy school life by taking to his smartphone and engaging with an online jihadist community, where he found the meaning that he felt was missing from his day-to-day life in Lancashire.

The 15-year-old, who was not identified, will serve at least five years in jail for inciting terrorism and will not be released until he is considered not to be unsafe.

Together they planned an attack on police officers, to be killed by a vehicle or by beheading, with Anzac Day “chosen for the killings because of its importance to Australia and its people”, Judge Saunders told Manchester’s Crown Court. “He would have welcomed the notoriety that he would have achieved”.

According to prosecutors, the teen encouraged another young ISIS supporter in Australia to attack police officers.

Another Australian Abu Khaled al-Cambodi who’d joined the terrorist group supposedly presented to Besim the lad.

The Blackburn teenager was re-arrested on April 2 when “disturbing material” was found on electronic devices seized from his bedroom.

The Blackburn teenager was also arrested again on the same day but declined to answer questions.

“In July, the teen pleaded guilty to inciting an act of terrorism overseas”.

Besim is awaiting trial in Australia next year. In detention the defendant acknowledged that a “a massacre could have happened” if authorities hadn’t intervened, boasting that it might have made him “ill-famed”.

The defendant and his parents embraced before he was led in the court to start his sentence after sentence was passed down.

“From the early communication we could read, it was obvious the Anzac Day memorial service was going to be a target”, said Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Mole of the North West Counter Terrorism Unit.

They were “relieved” that no-one was injured as a outcome of his behaviour and now wished to begin “trying to fix the damage”.