TEEN’S BIEBER TERROR PLOT LETTER
ATEENAGE boy accused of planning a terror attack to coincide with a Justin Bieber gig in Cardiff vowed to kill non-Muslim paramedics who treated the injured, a court heard.
The boy’s plot was for June 30, when the Canadian superstar performed at the city’s Principality Stadium, jurors were told.
Anti-terror police arrested the 17-year-old after raiding the Rhondda Cynon Taf house where he lived with his parents two days before the gig, which attracted 40,000 fans.
Birmingham Crown Court heard the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wrote a “martyrdom letter”, found in his bag, which was intended to be found after the attack.
The letter read: “I am a soldier of the Islamic State and I have attacked Cardiff today because your government keep on bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq. There will be more attacks in the future.”
A list of bullet points then followed the heading “Cardiff – June 2017”.
It read: “Run down the nonbelievers with a car. Strike the infidels who oppose Allah in the neck. Attack the emergency services who are also non-believers. In the name of Allah, may terrorism greet your country. And there will be more bombings and vehicle attacks with Allah’s permission. Allahu Akbar.”
Prosecutor Matthew Brook told jurors: “The hand-written note that you have just been looking at was examined by a handwriting expert.
“The expert said the findings provide conclusive support for the proposition that the defendant is the author of the note.”
Eight fingerprints matching the schoolboy were found on the letter, the trial heard.
A video entitled YouTube British Islamist Extremists was also found on his phone’s internet browser.
Mr Brook said: “A picture of the Nice lorry attacker and the lorry he used was stored on the defendant’s phone. That composite image, which was stored on the defendant’s phone a number of times, was then put onto Instagram. The latitude and longitude when these images were stored on his phone correspond with the area of his address.”
Jurors were told the youth conducted a web search relating to security at the concert after a post on his Instagram page stated: “Cardiff, are you ready for our terror?”
In a statement read to the jury, Detective Constable Lee Davis, a member of the Welsh Extremism and Counter-Terrorism Unit, gave details of the boy’s arrest at his home on June 30.
Det Con Davis stated: “At the address were two persons who I now know to be the defendant and his mother. I asked the boy, ‘Where is your phone?’ to which he replied, ‘It’s here’, and proceeded to pull out a mobile phone.”
The court was told the boy then wrote his Instagram account password – “TruckAttack” – in the officer’s notebook.
Detective Constable Paul Cook told the court the boy researched terrorist attacks on his Microsoft Windows Lumia smartphone.
He said: “From June 15 there were two videos created on the phone, both of those videos could be retrieved from the phone. “Both were of the Nice lorry attack. “There were two videos being recorded on the phone but they couldn’t be viewed by police – they were deleted.”
The court heard these videos were entitled “Pro-ISIS telegram channels suggest alternative packing for IEDs”.
The youth denies preparing to commit acts of terrorism and four other terror charges after a claw hammer and a knife were found in his school bag.
The trial continues.