A 17-year-old will spend 11 years in jail for plotting an attack on a Justin Bieber concert

Back on June 30, 2017, Welsh police arrested 17-year-old Lloyd Gunton on charges that he was going to perform an act of terror on Justin Bieber’s stadium concert in Cardiff.

A search turned up, a claw hammer, a kitchen knife and a martyrdom letter in which the kid declared himself “a soldier of Islamic State.”

I am a soldier of the Islamic State. I have attacked Cardiff today because your government keep on bombing targets in Syria and Iraq. There will be more attacks in the future.

There was another set of bullet points that included things like “run down the non-believers with a car” and “strike the infidels who oppose Allah in the neck.”

Digging into his computer, cops found search histories related to concert security procedures along with a poster for that night’s concert. Two issues of an ISIS propaganda magazine were also located. All that was enough to file charges against him.

In his defense, Gunton says that he “didn’t believe in Islam” and just had a “stupid interest in the gory” and had “never actually thought” about following through with an attack. “I eat ham,” he said.

In court, he said:

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 radicalisation. I wanted to see if it was possible, not for me, but from someone else’s point of view.

It seems that this curiosity has doomed him. Gunton will serve at least 11 years in prison before he’s eligible for parole.

(Via The Guardian)