A 15-year-old British boy who plotted to behead police officers at an Anzac Day parade in Australia has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Blackburn teenager will serve at least five years for inciting terrorism and will only be released once he is no longer considered to be dangerous.
He sent thousands of online messages to an alleged Australian jihadist and was planning “a massacre”, the court heard.
He is believed to be the youngest Briton guilty of a terror offence.
Police said the plan hatched by the boy – who was aged 14 at the time and will remain anonymous due to his age – was “shocking in its brutality and scope”.
The boy remains a “significant risk”, the judge, Mr Justice Saunders, said.
Dominic Casciani, BBC home affairs correspondent, said the five-year minimum term was a “window of opportunity” to see if the boy can be deradicalised before he is then moved into the adult prison system.
But our correspondent said he may potentially never leave custody.
The race to stop the teenage terrorist
The teenager – now Britain’s youngest convicted terrorist – comes from a “normal” family in Blackburn, Lancashire; he had a “typical relationship” with his mother who would drive him to any appointments.
But the picture that emerged when police searched his bedroom was far from normal. On the windowsill they found a wooden box labelled Islamic State in the way a teenager might carve out the name of a pop idol.
But it was what detectives found within encrypted messages that revealed Australia was just days away from experiencing a violent terrorist attack orchestrated by the schoolboy.
The court heard how the boy adopted an older persona in his messages to alleged Australian jihadist Sevdet Besim, 18, in which he instructed him to carry out an Islamic State terror group inspired attack.
They had been put in touch by a well-known Islamic State recruiter, Abu Khaled al-Cambodi – also an Australian.
The plot, hatched from the bedroom of the Lancashire teenager’s suburban home earlier this year, was for Mr Besim to run over at least one police officer and then behead them with a knife at the remembrance parade in Melbourne, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Anzac Day, held on 25 April each year, commemorates Australian and New Zealand personnel killed in conflicts – and this year marked the centenary of the World War One battle in Gallipoli.
In one exchange of messages, the teenager suggested Mr Besim get his “first taste of beheading” by attacking “a proper lonely person”.
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Source: BBC