Teenager Guilty Over Terror Grooming Plot

A teenager has been found guilty of plotting terror attacks by grooming and bullying a man with learning difficulties to make a bomb and hack a British soldier to death.

Kazi Islam, 18, who lived at home with his parents, tried to persuade Harry Thomas to buy the ingredients for a pipe bomb and to attack one or more soldiers with a kitchen knife or meat cleaver in a chilling echo of Fusilier Lee Rigby's killing outside Woolwich barracks in May 2013.

He encouraged the 19-year-old to start calling himself Haroon and tried to radicalise him with stories of innocent children being killed.

But his plans were scuppered after Mr Thomas failed to buy any of the right ingredients for a bomb and told "a few mates" what they were doing.

A series of exchanges on BlackBerry Messenger and social media sites were discovered in police raids on his east London home.

Islam had tried to disguise the bomb plot with code words telling Mr Thomas: "So we need to work on this cake."

But the older youth, who has Asperger's syndrome, failed to understand this and responded: "cake? U mean the b o m b."

The defendant, from Newham, east London, who worked for a company selling board games including Monopoly and Cluedo, had denied engaging in the preparation of terrorist acts.

Islam said he had met Mr Thomas on an IT course at Barking and Dagenham College and decided to befriend him in October 2013.

He claimed he had only talked to Mr Thomas about getting the ingredients for a bomb as an "experiment" in radicalisation.

He was inspired by the case of Nicky Reilly , also an Asperger's sufferer, who had been involved in a failed suicide bombing in Exeter.

Islam told jurors: "I just wanted to see if he would succumb to it. I was waiting for him to say if he had made purchase of the materials that were discussed and had he done so, I would have told him 'no', I would have told him what I was doing."

For "research purposes" the practising Muslim attended meetings and talks held by the banned extremist group al Muhajiroun, viewed jihadist propaganda online and downloaded a document entitled How to Make Semtex.

Islam was convicted by a majority of 10 to two after the jury had deliberated for more than 14 hours.

As he was remanded in custody to await sentence on 29 May, judge Richard Marks warned that a custodial sentence was "inevitable".

Following the conviction, Commander Richard Walton, head of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command (SO15), said: "Islam groomed and bullied a vulnerable man to try and get him to make a bomb or attack soldiers.

"We were able to intervene early on this occasion and prevent what we believe would have been an act of terrorism in the UK.

"We continue to appeal to anyone who may have knowledge of people with similar intentions. The earliest we can intervene to prevent terrorism the better.

"We also remind the public that there is currently a need to protect vulnerable or impressionable adults or children from this brand of Islamic extremism."