On 17 April 2021, his parents went to a police station and asked for help
First mistake.
his father told police “he was prepared to sacrifice my son for the safety of the Australian community”.
Kinda shitty parents, damn.
An online covert operative was tasked with communicating to Thomas using two personae: a 24-year-old Muslim man from NSW, and a more extreme person located overseas.
The purpose of the operation was to find Thomas online and “engage him in chat to ascertain his intent if any”, the operative told the court. The strategy was to gather intelligence and information that could be used to charge Thomas with terrorism offences.
On the first occasion Thomas spoke with the operative online, he asked the officer: “are you a spy” and “do you work with the Asio”, to which the operative, in the role of the first persona, responded “I hate these killab [dog]”.
The operative then wrote “should I ask the same of you akhi” to which Thomas replied “I am 13 years old”.
The operative chatted with Thomas on 55 of the next 71 days, including during breaks at school and late at night.
The operative told an operational psychologist, who was expected to provide advice to him about how to communicate effectively online with Thomas, that “this … is a kid on the spectrum, I’m letting him do all the talking [and] just building rapport”.
There were 1,400 pages of online chats between the pair, Fleming found.
The first persona introduced Thomas to the second, more extreme, persona, who encouraged him to make a bomb or kill an AFP member. But the operative gave evidence that Thomas was naive, and living a “fantasy life online”, including by asking questions like whether he could join the kids’ section of Islamic State.
Way to get your kid to hate you