A group of teenagers arrested in sweeping raids after the Wakeley attack in 2024 have pleaded guilty to preparing a terror attack in Sydney before they were foiled by state and federal police counter-terrorism investigators. The group, who The Saturday Telegraph revealed at the time were making plans to use a “stash house” to hold weapons ahead of a “kuffar plan” (kuffar means “disbelievers” in Arabic), appeared on Friday at the NSW Supreme Court and will be sentenced next year. They were arrested shortly after the April 2024 Wakeley terror attack in which Assyrian bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was set upon in a stabbing attack that was inadvertently livestreamed online. The Telegraph can reveal that the four teens – who were all minors at the time of the offending and can’t be named – have pleaded guilty to conspiring to prepare a terrorist attack. Previously, in the Children’s Court, two of those teenagers pleaded guilty to a further charge of sharing violent extremist material, while the third pleaded guilty to illegally supplying a firearm. The development marks more than two years of investigations and legal proceedings, and the charges are among the most-severe of those filed against a total of seven teenage boys who the NSW Joint Counter-Terrorism Team arrested in April 2024. At the time of that operation, 12 people were raided, seven teenagers arrested and six later charged. The Telegraph reported at the time of their arrest how the boys’ terror plot was foiled thanks to an associate being arrested about a week prior for an unrelated offence, giving investigators access to their phone and group chats on encrypted messaging application Signal.
In one Signal group chat, called “Plans”, the teens talked about obtaining firearms, including “dirty guns” and a “shotty”. “I really want to target the yahud (Jewish people)… We will plan it,” one of the teens said in that Signal group. That teen asked another: “how long will all this planning take?” As conversations between the boys progressed, the teenagers talked about being excited to “to die and kill”, needing to be “patient”, as their plot needed to be planned “for a while”. When the teens realised their associate had been arrested they talked panickedly among themselves. “Oh s…t… we were planning big stuff bro, it’s a conspiracy for a terror attack, I think,” one teenager said when he realised their group chat had been discovered. One teenager changed their social-media profile picture to the ISIS flag and posted the terror group’s propaganda videos on another account, while also sharing links to websites where the boys could buy pocket knives. “I’m ready to go to war, don’t worry,” one of the teens told the group.
In late April, after the Wakeley terror attack, police swooped on the network of boys. In the JCTT’s sweeping Sydney raids, investigators seized – from across the more than 10 teenagers raided or arrested – a knife, mobile phones, laptops, batons, machete, a PlayStation 4, hard drives, two hand-drawn ISIS flags, a large hunting knife and a tomahawk.
The network of teenagers targeted in those raids is broad and disparate. Police also investigated some among the group for violent anti-LGBT offences and bashings, while others have later been arrested for extremism offences and some have ties to known-ISIS extremists. All four of the teenagers will now proceed to a sentence hearing next April in the Supreme Court on the charge of conspiring to prepare a terrorist attack. The pleas entered at the Children’s Court to the additional offences, as 16BA offences, will be taken into account on sentencing.