Children are being used as “dispensable” weapons by organised criminals and hostile states paying for crimes including murder and arson, international law enforcement leaders have warned.
In Britain, the head of the National Crime Agency (NCA) said that “younger and younger” children were being investigated as the perpetrators of serious crimes and that a 15-year-old boy had recently been arrested on suspicion of trying to import a gun.
Several of the suspects arrested over arson attacks on Jewish institutions claimed by the Iran-linked group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya in March and April were teenagers, and a Norwegian man is to go on trial later this year for allegedly being sent to Britain to commit an assassination on behalf of an Iranian proxy group days after his 18th birthday.
Officials believe that many cases start with teenagers responding to adverts posted informally on social media, some of which disguise the sort of work being offered and others that do not.
In a rare public intervention, law enforcement leaders from nations in the Five Eyes intelligence partnership gathered in London last week to sound a warning about the trend of child recruitment being seen in multiple countries.
