A BRITISH teen who urged an Australian man to commit a terror attack at Melbourne’s Anzac Day parade wants his name kept secret forever.
The boy was only 14 when he exchanged hundreds of messages with Sevdet Besim, 18, including obsessing over a sharp large knife.
“Wow, that’s a weapon. The blade is perfect for tearing through [a] throat.”
Besim, who was then 18, and the boy, who can only be known as RXG, exchanged hundreds of encrypted messages over several days and an atrocity at Melbourne’s 2015 Anzac Day commemorations was only averted after counter-terrorism police foiled the plot.
Besim was jailed for 10 years after pleading guilty to plotting a terror attack and RXG was jailed for inciting terrorism overseas.
Britain’s youngest terrorist, he is approaching his 18th birthday and can be released in 2020 if he can convince authorities he is no longer dangerous.
But it is what he is trying to convince a judge of now that is causing controversy in Britain. The teen wants his name suppressed for the rest of his life - something that is so rare it has only been done in the UK half a dozen times.
Britain’s The Sunday Times reported the High Court will have to be assured the teen’s life would be placed at serious risk or his rehabilitation would be affected if he was named.
If he’s successful it would be the first time anyone has won permanent suppression for terrorism offences. It would also put him a category of some of Britain’s worst criminals, including the young killers of toddler James Bulger in 1993.
He was originally given suppression because the sentencing judge feared he would be “glorified for what he has done” by parts of society.
James Pickup QC, a lawyer acting for the teen, told Manchester crown court the boy was a different person than since he was first locked up and had made progress, The Sunday Times reported.
“He accepts his crimes were barbaric, immoral and wholly wrong.”
The shocking conversations between the boy and Besim were revealed in court when the pair were sentenced. After being told the large knife was perfect for cutting through a human neck, Besim replied: “I’d love to take out some cops. I was gonna meet with them, then take some heads.”
Besim thought he was talking to a married man with children and not the slightly built teen who had gained 24,000 Twitter followers by pretending to be someone older. One of those followers was Melbourne terrorist Neil Prakash, who a Turkish court last week refused to extradite to Australia.
He said he planned the attack after his friend Numan Haider, 18, was shot dead by police after stabbing two officers outside a Melbourne police station in 2014.
The teen lived in the British city of Blackburn and came from a “respectable” Pakistani family - but after his parents separated the boy struggled to fit into his new school, became obsessed with Osama bin Laden and was placed on the government’s national deradicalisation scheme.
Staff on the scheme concluded he was just playing up to them, and police later arrested him for threatening to kill his teachers. It was while officers were searching his room they discovered the shocking Australian terror plot.
Aside from the messages they found a wooden box with “Islamic State” carved into it, pictures of Isis fighters on his computer, and internet searches about martyrdom.
But it was when they finally were able to decrypt the messages they realised what they were up against. As well as attacking police and soldiers at the Anzac events, one method of attack they spoke about was Besim strapping explosives to a kangaroo and setting the animal loose at the parade.
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