A 14-year-old boy was arrested on terror charges in the U.K. earlier this month, leading police to uncover a larger terror plot in Australia.
The 14-year-old was nabbed in Blackburn on April 2 after the North West Counter Terrorism Unit and Lancashire Constabulary raided an address where
electronic devices were located, according to the BBC News.
"We seized some media devices and we found some communications on those devices that were a concern to us," Tony Mole, with the North West Counter Terrorism Unit, told BBC News. "We thought it indicated a potential credible terrorist attack in Australia. We immediately contacted the Australian authorities and we've been working with them since in relation to the material that we uncovered."
Australian authorities reportedly took five more teenagers into custody Saturday in Melbourne, while two others remained at large.
Mole told the BBC News that the unit did not find any evidence that of an "imminent attack in the U.K.," but did uncover an alleged plot to target Australia's Anzac Day commemorations.
The Guardian reported that the 14-year-old U.K. boy was sent to a youth detention center where he remains. Westminster magistrates court Judge Emma Arbuthnot said that the allegations "undoubtedly fit the bill as a real crime and there is a real prospect of a custodial sentence of at least two years."
Arbuthnot ordered the teenager to appear in front of a preliminary hearing at the Old Bailey, London, on Friday afternoon.
Prosecutor Rebecca Ledwidge charged in court that the teenager allegedly encouraged an 18-year-old man in Australia to carry out a "knife attack or gun attack or car attack on the police" during the Anzac Day celebrations, The Guardian noted.
She said that second allegation dealt with the Australian plan to "break into someone's house and
behead" them, according to the Daily Mail.
The boy's defense attorney, David King, said that the defendant comes from a "respectable family" and agreed the case should be sent to the crown court.
"His mother and father have done nothing but cooperate completely with police and do everything they can," King said, according to the Daily Mail.
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