He researched a pressure-cooker bomb and the Sydney Marathon finish at 14. A judge has decided he will not go to jail

A Sydney teenager who looked up how to build a pressure-cooker bomb and studied the finish line of the Sydney Marathon as a possible target will serve his sentence in the community, after a judge found he had never firmly decided to carry out an attack.

The boy, now 16, was sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday to a three-year community corrections order. He was 14 when Australian Federal Police officers arrested him at his home in western Sydney in August 2024. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to doing acts in preparation for a terrorist act, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

He cannot be identified.

What did he plan?

The court heard he considered a mass-casualty attack at the Sydney Opera House. He sought instructions online for making a pressure-cooker bomb and researched possible targets, among them the Sydney Marathon finish line beside the Opera House, an event that draws tens of thousands of runners and spectators.

He did not obtain any bomb materials and never set a date. Over about five weeks in 2024 he shared extremist material online and praised Al Qaeda on encrypted apps, and he emailed the surviving Boston Marathon bomber in a US prison.

Why no jail?

Justice Stephen Campbell found the planning was at the least serious end of the scale and “not sophisticated”, and that the boy had done nothing to cover his tracks. The judge said he was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the boy had formed a determined intention to act, describing him as “hesitant at best” about carrying out an attack and showing a “high level of naivety”.

There was no evidence of an imminent attack, and the judge found the boy had not tried to draw others into extremism. He accepted that the boy had renounced Islamic extremism, was remorseful, and had excellent prospects of rehabilitation.

Under the order he must not use encrypted messaging apps, must give his phone password to a youth justice officer, and must keep taking part in any deradicalisation or education programs he is directed to.

How does a 14-year-old get here?

The judge traced it to TikTok. The boy first came across extremist material there and found it “interesting”, then moved on to increasingly violent content, including Al Qaeda material and Islamic State recruitment propaganda.

That path is now familiar to Australian counter-terrorism agencies. ASIO and the AFP have warned publicly for several years that a growing share of the people they investigate for extremism are teenagers, many of them radicalised online. This case shows why the youngest are hard to read: plenty of violent talk, very little capability.

This sentence shows how the courts are weighing that. The offence is one of the most serious on the books, but the judge drew a line between a boy who searched and talked, and one who was building something. The sentence leans on supervision and deradicalisation programs, with jail left out.

Who decides whether he is still a risk?

For the next three years, a youth justice officer will. The conditions on his phone and messaging apps are designed to let authorities see whether he drifts back towards the material that drew him in. A breach of a community corrections order can see an offender brought back before the court and resentenced.