Sevdet Ramadan Besim, a 19-year-old arrested in police raids last April, pleaded not guilty to four charges related to extremism. He is accused of planning an ISIS-inspired attack on ANZAC Day in the cities of Melbourne or neighboring Dandenong last year.
The day commemorates all Australians who have served in conflict, on the anniversary of the 1915 landings at Gallipoli to battle the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
Prosecutors described Besim’s conversation about the kangaroo bomb in a document released by the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“The conversation continues with Besim detailing what he did that day and they have a general discussion around animals and wildlife in Australia including a suggestion that a kangaroo could be packed with C4 explosive, painted with the ISIS symbol and set loose on police officers,” the document said.
Besim discussed the plot with a British accomplice, a 15-year-old boy from the Lancashire town of Blackburn who was sentenced to life in prison in October. He had sent thousands of messages to Besim planning a “massacre” and to behead an Australian police officer. The pair were connected by the Australian ISIS recruiter Abu Khaled al-Cambodi.
Besim wrote to the teenager that he would “love to take out some cops,” the court heard. “I was gonna meet with them then take some heads ahaha.” He is accused of planning to run over then behead a police officer.
The teenager, whose identity cannot be revealed because of his age, suggested in one message that Besim get his “first taste of beheading” by attacking “a proper lonely person.”
Authorities allege that Besim was influenced by radical Islamist ideologies and had pledged support to ISIS. He faces the charges of searching the Internet, engaging in communications and creating a memo with the intent to plan an extremist attack, BBC News reported.
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