A 14-year-old British schoolboy secretly tapping away on his smartphone in his bedroom became a key player in a terror plot to behead police officers in Melbourne on Anzac Day.
The plot was foiled but the case is a chilling reminder of the global reach of the Islamic State terror group and its use of social media to remotely indoctrinate young Muslims into its cause.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is Britain's youngest convicted terrorist after pleading guilty to inciting an 18-year-old Melbourne man to carry out the Anzac Day attack under the banner of IS.
On Friday the boy, now aged 15, was sentenced by Justice John Saunders in the Manchester Crown Court to a life term with a minimum detention period of five years.
He cannot be released until it's determined he's no longer a danger to the public.
Justice Saunders said extremist IS propagandists had groomed the boy online, turning him into a radical extremist and using him for their own ends.
"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," he said.
The boy's Melbourne contact allegedly procured a serrated "Rambo" knife and prepared his "martyrdom message" just days before his planned Anzac Day attack.
The boy and the man came into contact online through notorious Australian IS recruiter Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, also known as Neil Prakash.
The Melbourne man allegedly believed the boy was an adult IS operative directing him to carry out his martyr's mission.
But the plot was undone by the boy's threats to behead his teachers at his school in the northern English city of Blackburn where classmates called him "the terrorist" because of his extremist views.
His threats brought him to the attention of police who searched his house, seized his Samsung phone and uncovered his plotting after decoding the encrypted messages on it.
Police in Manchester quickly alerted Australian police who arrested the Melbourne man and so thwarted the attack.
Between March 16 and 25 this year the boy and his Melbourne contact exchanged more than 3000 text messages, the boy urging him to plan and carry out an attack.
The messaging came only months after 18-year-old Numan Haider - a friend of the Melbourne man - was fatally shot by police after attacking two counter-terrorism officers with a knife in Melbourne in September 2014.
Haider's attack closely followed an IS call to followers worldwide to commit "lone wolf" attacks on non-Muslims, by stabbing them with knives or running them over with cars.
The Melbourne man chose to carry out an Anzac Day attack, messaging the boy it would "make sure the dogs remember this as well as their fallen heros" (sic).
Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Mole, the head of the UK's Northwest Counter-Terrorism Unit, said as soon as investigators began decoding the pair's messages and worked out "something sinister was going on" they emailed Australian police.
He warned of the compelling seduction of the IS message to some young Muslims who could "self radicalise" on the internet as the 14-year-old boy appeared to do.
Defence lawyer James Pickup said in court the boy's parents had been separated, he had a degenerative eye condition and was in constant trouble at school, all of this prompting him to feel isolated and marginalised.
"The void was filled when he went on his phone and accessed the ISIS propagandists."
Mr Pickup said the boy felt accepted and "became a celebrity within that Twitter jihadi community" because of his youth and passion for the cause and he quickly built up 24,000 Twitter followers.
He said contact with IS recruiters like al-Cambodi assured the boy that IS methods were "justified within Islam" including that "killing was the way of Allah".
After al-Cambodi informed the boy that a "brother in Australia" wished to carry out a terror attack, the boy took on the role of moral guide and mentor to the Melbourne man.
Prosecutor Paul Greaney said that putting the boy's disruptive and threatening behaviour at school together with his internet activity, a clear picture emerged of a young person who was "dangerously radicalised and committed to ISIS and the idea of violent jihad".
He said a frightening indication of the lengths to which the boy was prepared to go was indicated by a message urging his Melbourne contact to "break into someone's house and get your first taste of beheading".
The Melbourne man responded that it sounded "a little risky".
After his arrest the boy told a psychologist he wanted his Melbourne contact to carry out the practice-run beheading because that was "the most brutal, gruesome and violent way to kill someone" and made "the greatest impact upon communities and hurts them most".
On April 18, just a week before Anzac Day and acting on the tip-off from the UK, police arrested the Melbourne man and he is now before the courts charged with planning a terror act.
Mr Greaney said a major terrorist plot in its late stages, orchestrated from the north of England but to be carried out in Melbourne, had been thwarted and in all probability a number of lives were saved.
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