30 June 2016•Update: 30 June 2016
MELBOURNE, Australia
A Daesh-influenced Australian teen pleaded guilty Thursday to plotting to run over and behead a police officer as part of an alleged terror plot.
News broadcaster ABC reported that Sevdet Besim, 19, from Melbourne admitted to the offense that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment at the Victorian Supreme Court.
Besim has been held since April 18, 2015 when officers swooped on Melbourne’s southeast, seizing knives and swords and arresting five teens.
He was accused of plotting a terror attack on ANZAC day, one of Australia’s most important national occasions that is commemorated April 25. It stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, many of whom fought in the 1915 Battle of Canakkale -- known as Gallipoli in Australia.
In April, the prosecution told the court that Besim and a 15-year-old in the United Kingdom, who was 14 at the time, had planned over online communications to paint the Daesh insignia on a kangaroo, pack it with explosives and let it loose in Melbourne.
The British teen is currently serving a minimum five-year term after a court in Manchester handed him a life sentence in October.
Besim is due to appear in court for a pre-sentence hearing in August.
Court documents showed that in the online communications, Besim had allegedly said he was "ready to fight these dogs on there [sic] doorstep" and would “love to take out some cops".
Australia has been engaged in efforts to increase anti-terror measures in recent years.
The country passed legislation in December to strip dual nationals of their citizenship if they are convicted or suspected of terrorism offenses.
It has also banned its citizens from traveling to Mosul in northern Iraq and Syria’s Raqqa province -- unless they have a "legitimate purpose" for being there.
