Teenage terror suspect Brustholm Ziamani (Telegraph)
Muslim convert Brustholm Ziamani was arrested on his way to behead a British soldier like the Lee Rigby killers. Ziamani was carrying a knife, hammer and Islamic flag when he was arrested.
Bloomberg reported:
A London teenager inspired by the brutal murder of a British soldier in 2013 was arrested on his way to commit a copycat attack carrying a knife, hammer and Islamic flag, prosecutors said on the first day of his trial.
Brustholm Ziamani, 19, who referred to one of the Lee Rigby killers as a “legend,” converted to Islam from Christianity last year and used social media to encourage others to “wage war against” the U.K. government as part of the “Islamic States of Ireland and Britain,” Annabel Darlow, the prosecution lawyer, said opening the trial in London Monday.
“His hatred of non-believers and interest in violent jihad began to crystallize into a plan to attack a member of the British military forces,” Darlow said.
The threat of a successful domestic attack is at the forefront of the U.K.’s counter-terrorism strategy. Cities from Ottawa to Sydney have fallen victim to attacks from radicalized Muslims in the past 12 months.
Rigby, 25, was attacked in May 2013 outside a military barracks in the Woolwich neighborhood of southeast London. Televised images of the bloodshed were transmitted around the world as police quickly called it an act of terror on British soil.
