A BLACKBURN teenager started showing signs of being ‘undoubtedly a troubled young person’ from the age of 12, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Paul Greaney QC detailed the background of the Muslim defendant and said, leading up to his offending, his family circumstances ‘appear to have been difficult’ when his parents were said to have separated.

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He was excluded from school several times for abusive and disobedient behaviour, Mr Greaney said.

The youngster was said to have ‘strong religious convictions’ and was disruptive when he attended a large secular school where most pupils were white.

Once he praised Osama bin Laden and stated his own desire to become a jihadist and a martyr, the court heard.

The defendant was later referred to the Government’s counter-extremism programme Channel after his mother explained to the school that he spent all night on his computer studying foreign affairs and ‘seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders’.

Mr Greaney said: “She stated also that he spent time talking over the internet to persons that he had not met.”

It led to him moving schools but his poor behaviour continued and more exclusions followed, the court was told.

He threatened a male teacher on ‘many occasions’ and said he would ‘cut his throat and watch him bleed to death’.

The voluntary Channel programme closed his case in July 2014 after the school noted no particular features of radicalisation.

Later that year his behaviour at school escalated and in one lesson he was heard talking to other pupils about beheading, the court heard, and pushed his phone into the face of a teacher, which played a video showing dead and bloody bodies.

Mr Greaney said: “He regularly mentioned death and unpleasant methods of torture. He also spoke of his desire to be a suicide bomber, stating that if he had to choose where to detonate his bomb it would be on a plane in order that he could maximise the fatalities.”

A second referral to Channel took place in November 2014 but the youngster continued to threaten to kill teachers.

In a lesson on the death penalty alongside the comment ‘killing another person is immoral’, he had written: “You could not be more wrong.”

By early March this year, said Mr Greaney, ‘a tipping point’ had been reached.

He said: “The teaching staff were increasingly concerned for their own safety and the evidence of radicalisation was overwhelming.

“He had disengaged from Channel and attempts to divert him from a path of extremism had failed.”

The boy was arrested at home on March 25 on suspicion of making threats to kill.