A 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named due to his age, has been found guilty of plotting an Isis-inspired terror attack in Cardiff, Wales, on the same day as a Justin Bieber concert.
When police raided the boy’s house, they found a claw hammer, a gutting knife, as well as a suicide note that read, “I am a soldier of the Islamic State. I have attacked Cardiff today because your government keeps on bombing targets in Syria and Iraq. There will be more attacks in the future.”
According to The Guardian, web searches with the terms “17-year-old jihad” and “vehicle mounting pavement – car ploughs through a crowd,” were also found, linking to the young boy. The boy had also been researching the Bieber concert scheduled in Cardiff for June 30, including the search term “Justin Bieber security.”
However, the defendant denied plans to carryout a terror attack and, instead, his barrister argued he had a “stupid interest in the gory.†The boy told the jury he did not own a Qur’an and was merely curious about how easy it was to research terrorist topics online. “I wanted to see how easy it was for people who had an interest in terrorism to go online and get information because the police and the government are trying to crack down on terrorism and radicalization,” he said from the stand. “I wanted to see if it was possible, not for me but from someone else’s point of view.”
