A teenage Islamic State fanatic has been jailed for life for plotting a terror attack on British police officers or soldiers after being radicalised online in the pandemic.
Muslim convert Matthew King, 19, expressed a desire to kill military personnel as he prepared to stake out a British Army barracks in Stratford, east London.
He discussed his plans and shared a “gory fantasy” with an online girlfriend with whom he struck up an adolescent flirtation, the Old Bailey heard.
His desires to launch an attack in Britain or travel to Syria to join so-called Islamic State were thwarted when his mother reported him to the Prevent counter-terrorism programme.
Authorities were also tipped off through an anti-terrorist hotline after he posted a video on a WhatsApp group on April 13 last year.
While in custody, King had made a violent threats to “behead an imam” and “kill and chop up staff”, the Old Bailey was told.
In January, King, from Wickford in Essex, pleaded guilty to preparation of terrorist acts between December 22 2021 and May 17 2022.
On Friday, he was handed a discretionary life sentence with a minimum term of six years in the first terrorism sentencing in England and Wales to be televised.
Judge Mark Lucraft KC praised King’s mother, saying: “She took the very bold step of alerting Prevent when she had concerns for her son. That cannot have been an easy thing to do in the first place and in my view she absolutely the right thing.”
