Boy, 14, from Jaffa charged with spying for al-Qaeda

Prosecutors file charges against a 14-year-old and accuse him of spying for al-Qaeda, after he was arrested last month in the West Bank while visiting his mother’s family.

The minor, whose name is barred from publication, is charged today in the Tel Aviv Juvenile District Court with maintaining contact with a foreign agent and providing intelligence to benefit the enemy.

The defendant, an Arab Israeli teen from Jaffa, has been diagnosed with autism and is developmentally challenged, according to his lawyer.

The boy had allegedly been active in an al-Qaeda group chat called “Cyber and Armed Jihad Movement” on the Signal messaging app, run by an agent for the terror group. He filmed two buildings formerly used as military facilities and provided the agent with their coordinates, prosecutors say. He supposedly planned to photograph a large police station in Tel Aviv, but never followed through with that.

In the group chat, he allegedly expressed his desire to assassinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and carry out a suicide attack against Israelis. He attempted to join Hamas and began to experiment with constructing homemade explosives, prosecutors add.

The boy’s mother has insisted on his innocence and urged that he be released from detention and undergo a psychiatric evaluation. He is being held in the Russian Compound, a detention facility in Jerusalem, where he has been subjected to beatings from guards and inmates, according to his lawyer.