Key facts
- The teenager, identified as RK, pleaded guilty to acts in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act.
- Justice Campbell ordered a three-year community corrections order, avoiding jail time.
- The court was told RK first saw extremist material on TikTok and later moved to more violent content.
- The judge said RK had no concrete plans and had not obtained bomb-making material.
- RK used ChatGPT to research the Boston marathon bomber and Sydney Opera House security, the court was told.
- Campbell said RK had renounced violent extremism and that deradicalisation was well advanced.
A teenager who admitted planning a terrorist attack in Sydney in 2024 was ordered into a three-year community corrections order by the New South Wales supreme court on Monday, avoiding jail. The 16-year-old, identified only as RK because of his age, had pleaded guilty to acts in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act.
Justice Stephen Campbell said RK was first exposed to extremist material on TikTok, beginning with historical and political content, then videos about the September 11, 2001 attacks and the wars that followed, before moving to religious-themed videos and content of increasing violence. RK told the court he was trying to impress people he spoke to online and became focused on the Sydney Opera House as a potential target.
RK said he was radicalised and "brainwashed by propaganda" after watching bomb-making videos on YouTube. Campbell said RK had no concrete plans to carry out an attack and had not obtained any material for bomb-making. RK used Telegram to seek instructions on making a pressure cooker bomb and emailed a publicly available prison address asking whether he could contact Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston marathon bomber; the judge said he never made contact. RK also used ChatGPT to obtain information about Tsarnaev and to ask about security arrangements at the Sydney Opera House and where terrorists were imprisoned in New South Wales, and sent Islamic State videos to others on Telegram.
Campbell said RK had shown remorse and had undergone six sessions of religious and ethical training from a Muslim cleric. "I am satisfied that he has genuinely renounced his adherence to Islamic violent extremism, which in any event was incipient and hesitant during the short period of his offending," the judge said. "I fully accept he was radicalised to a degree, but that the process of deradicalisation is well advanced."