14-year-old boy remanded over terror charges

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/24/detention-centre-terror-charges-british-teenager-anzac-day-australia

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Britain’s youngest Islamist terror suspect has been sent for trial in Manchester accused of involvement in an Islamic State-inspired beheading and an atrocity on police officers in Australia.

The 14-year-old schoolboy, who cannot be named because of his age, is charged with encouraging another person to carry out an attack at an Anzac Day parade in Melbourne. He is also charged with inciting another to behead someone in the same country.

Related: British boy charged over alleged Anzac Day terror plot in Australia

The teenager, from Blackburn, Lancashire, spoke to confirm his name and address in a brief hearing before district judge Emma Arbuthnot at Westminster magistrates court on Friday.

The boy, wearing a police-issued grey tracksuit, was flanked by two suited police officers and a court security official guarded the entrance to the glass-encased dock. His father sat in front of the defendant outside the dock.

Remanding him to a youth detention centre, Arbuthnot said the allegations undoubtedly fitted the bill as “a real crime” and there was “a real prospect of a custodial sentence of at least two years”.

At the Old Bailey in central London later on Friday, the boy appeared via videolink to be told he faced a three-to-four week trial this year.

Mr Justice Saunders told the defendant that the trial was expected to take place in Manchester in September.

Outlining the charges against the boy, prosecutor Rebecca Ledwidge said he encouraged an 18-year-old man in Australia to carry out a “knife attack or gun attack or car attack on the police” during the Anzac Day commemoration in Melbourne.

She added that, despite his age, the defendant should be tried at the crown court because he was accused of grave crimes.

The boy’s lawyer, Daniel King, of Forbes solicitors in Blackburn, appealed to the judge to allow him conditional bail but was unsuccessful.

According to Greater Manchester police, the teenager was first arrested on 2 April following “the examination of a number of electronic devices”. Detectives alerted colleagues in Australia last week after finding evidence of a “credible terrorist threat”.

Counter-terrorism police went to the boy’s home on Saturday, at the same time that five teenagers were held in dawn raids in Melbourne.

British counter-terrorism officers had flown to Melbourne to help with the investigation there. The arrests also led to a review of security for Anzac Day events in Britain.